Browsing Research documents by Author "Klein, Sandra K."
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Foss, Kirsten; Foss, Nicolai J.; Klein, Peter G.; Klein, Sandra K. (København, 2005)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Several writers link entrepreneurship to asset ownership, trying to incorporate the theory of entrepreneurship into the theory of the firm. The critical link, we argue, is capital heterogeneity. Transaction cost, property rights, and resourcebased approaches to the firm assume that assets, both tangible and intangible, are heterogeneous; arranging these assets to minimize contractual hazards, to provide efficient investment incentives, or to exploit competitive advantage is conceived as the prime task of economic organization. None of these approaches, however, is based on a systematic theory of capital heterogeneity. In this paper we outline the approach to capital developed by the Austrian school of economics and integrate it into an entrepreneurial theory of the firm. We refine Austrian capital theory by defining capital heterogeneity in terms of subjectively perceived attributes, that is, the functions, characteristics, and uses of capital assets. Such attributes are not given, but have to be discovered by means of entrepreneurial action. Thinking of entrepreneurship as the organization of heterogeneous capital provides new insights into the emergence, boundaries, and internal organization of the firm, and it suggests testable implications about how and where entrepreneurship is manifested. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, heterogeneous assets, judgment, ownership, firm boundaries, internal organization. JEL Codes: B53, D23, L2 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7292 Files in this item: 1
ckg-wp 2005-5.pdf (277.6Kb) -
Evidence from Corporate DivestituresKlein, Peter G.; Klein, Sandra K. (København, 2001)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: We assess the argument that corporate acquisitions are driven mainly by agency considerations. This argument holds that certain kinds of mergers—mergers between firms in unrelated industries, mergers between firms with large differences in price-earnings ratios, and mergers financed with stock swaps, for example—will consistently fail, eventually being reversed in a divestiture. Appealing to Mises’s theory of entrepreneurship, we argue instead that divestitures of previously acquired assets usually result from experimentation and learning, healthy attributes of a market economy. We then describe empirical evidence that the long-term success or failure of corporate acquisitions cannot, in general, be predicted by measures of agency conflicts. We also show that mistaken acquisitions are more likely under certain circumstances, namely during periods of intense, industry-specific regulatory activity. This is consistent with the view, expressed repeatedly in the Austrian literature, that entrepreneurial error is associated with government intervention—in particular, with government ownership of property and interference with the price system. JEL Classifications: D84, G34, G38 Key words: acquisitions, divestitures, entrepreneurship, market process, experimentation URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6905 Files in this item: 1
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Foss, Kirsten; Foss, Nicolai Juul; Klein, Peter G.; Klein, Sandra K. (København, 2002)[More information][Less information]
Now showing items 1-3 of 3