Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology

Using an unbalanced panel data set covering 98 countries and the period 2004-2012, this paper aims to ascertain the extent to which the governmental, globalization and governance factors affect the formal business start-ups.
We represent government by formal constraints to starting a new business while KOF indices that measure the economic, social and political dimensions of globalization are the proxies for globalization. Governance indicators are those of the World Bank’s well-known six worldwide governance clusters.
Moreover, we include unemployment rate in the model to control for macroeconomic stability and business cycle effects. Panel regression results reveal that formal procedures hamper the business start-ups in all country groups while unemployment has negative impacts for the global panel and high-income countries.
Globalization indicators, except economic globalization, have no significant effect and the influence of governance varies among its dimensions and country groups. Overall findings infer that people who start their businesses need a credible government that makes the things easier without any political pressures, but not that regulatory monitoring, controlling and directing the business environment strictly.

  Government, Globalization and Governance Impacts on Business Start-ups: Evidence from a Classified Panel Data Analysis (745.2 KiB, 2,058 hits)

Governments often use budget so as to provide incentives for citizens to adopt new policies, especially when these are promoting eco-friendly technologies e.g. to subsidise the price of a hybrid-car. The public money spent on each policy, is considered to be value-for–money only if many citizens do adopt the proposed policy. This is also known as the ‘cost-effectiveness’ or the ‘economic success’ of a new policy. The latter should not be confused with the ‘economic impact’ of the new policy, as this is usually referred to the respective macro/micro socio-economic impact. This study reports on a experiment with semi-experts using Structured Analogies (SA) forecasting the success of a new policy promoting replacing old household air conditioners with energy saving units under a new environment and technology initiative implemented by a European government. The findings shows evidence that Structured Analogies (SA) is a useful forecasting tool for policy making, however all methods predicted results that were considerably off the mark, indicating the difficulty of the forecasting task under examination.

  Forecasting the Success of Governmental "Incentivized" Initiatives: Case Study of a New Policy Promoting the Replacement of Old Household; Air-conditioners (698.6 KiB, 2,589 hits)