For those wanting to spend some real time getting to know data sets looking at nascent entrepreneurship.  

Panel Study on Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) 101
July 9-12, 2009

In your research, have you ever looked for

• a nationally representative source of nascent entrepreneurs?
• a nationally representative sample of people who are not organizing
• businesses?
• longitudinal measurements of entrepreneurial performance?

Then you want data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED),
now with two datasets.

But before you try to use the PSED, do you know what this means?

FILTER OFF
USE ALL.
SELECT IF (sysmis(cfphlag=1) or

(cfphlag < 90)).
EXECUTE.

If the answer is "no," then whether you are a faculty member or a doctoral student,
you need PSED 101 from the College of Charleston!

PSED 101
This four-day intensive workshop assumes that you have research questions about the
nature of entrepreneurship that you would like to answer using PSED I or PSED II.

It does not assume that you have (a) any degree of familiarity with the contents of
the datasets, or (b) knowledge of how to build syntax files that will answer the
research questions you have.

You'll learn how to write SPSS or STATA syntax files for creating variables, checking
data, correcting weights, performing analyses.

You'll also learn the overall data structure of the PSED, the differences between the
PSED I and PSED II, and the sorts of research problems for which each is most
appropriate.

Finally, under the individual guidance of the two instructors, you'll learn how to
construct the details of syntax files needed to answer your own research questions.

You'll leave with a CD containing the course materials, and with a personal copy
of the Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Business Creation.

INSTRUCTORS

Amy E. Davis is Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the
College of Charleston. Her research examines gender, family, and social
networks in entrepreneurial and organizational contexts. Her dissertation
research was supported by a Kauffman Foundation Doctoral Fellowship. Amy's
PSED work is done in STATA.

Kelly G. Shaver is Professor and Chair of the Department of Management and
Entrepreneurship at the College of Charleston. He was in charge of the
Person Variables section of the PSED1, and served on the Advisory Committee for
PSED2. His specific research interest focuses on the psychological variables that
predict entrepreneurial persistence. Kelly's PSED work has been done using SPSS,
and his syntax file "kscleans" has been widely used to prepare the PSED1 dataset
for analysis of individual-level variables.

The PSED is described in detail in the Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The
Process of Business Creation, edited by Gartner, Shaver, Carter, and Reynolds
(2004) and available from Sage Publications, ISBN 0-7619-2758-1.

Thanks to funding from the Kauffman Foundation, both PSED I and PSED II are
available at no charge from the Institute of Social Research at the University of
Michigan: http://psed.isr.umich.edu.

REGISTRATION

The workshop will be held in the Tate Center for Entrepreneurship at the College
of Charleston from July 9-12, 2008 (arrival should be on July 8).

For 2009, the PSED 101 registration fee is $200. Thanks to support from the
Kauffman Foundation, the first 10 registrants who need travel support will
each receive a $450 travel scholarship.

To register contact Kelly G. Shaver by email.

For those aiming for publication in top-tier journals.

Fourth Annual Society for Entrepreneurship Scholars (SES)
Conference & Manuscript Boot-camp
October 8th -9th, 2009
Lead Sponsoring University: The Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business
Sponsoring University: Johns Hopkins University
Sponsoring Foundation: Kauffman Foundation
Call for Papers - deadline August 4th 2009

The Society of Entrepreneurship Scholars (SES) invites you to submit your best work- work you believe merits publication in a top tier journal - to the fourth Annual SES Conference and Manuscript Boot-camp. The sole purpose of this two-day conference is to increase the flow of manuscripts about entrepreneurship that are submitted to and published in top tier journals. Papers accepted for the conference will be reviewed in depth by at least two senior scholars. These scholars will then work with you during two four-hour working sessions, both individually and in small groups, on measures you can take to improve the manuscript and enhance its prospects for publication in a top tier journal.

The second day of the conference will be spent in plenary and working groups on topics that are fundamental to mission of the SES.
Some previous scholar mentors for the conference include, among others:

Some previous participants from different universities, among others:

• Howard Aldrich, Duke University
• Joe Mahoney, Harvard University
• Jay Barney, Purdue University
• Mike Hitt, Ohio State University
• Michael Lubatkin, University of Utah
   

Twenty-four (24) papers will be accepted for the conference. The sole criterion for acceptance is the paper's perceived potential for publication in top tier journals. Submitted papers must not be published or currently under review at a journal, but may be at any stage of development; i.e. working papers as well as papers that have already been reviewed and rejected by a journal. Papers may be conceptual or empirical. We encourage submissions from senior faculty who are interested in publishing about entrepreneurship, as well as from junior faculty and doctoral students.
Since the design of the conference restricts the number of participants, only one author (who should identify themselves as the submitting author) will be invited to participate in the conference. You may submit multiple co-authored papers to the conference, but each submitting author must be unique. If the submitting author is unable to attend the conference, the invitation will be withdrawn. Co-authors may not attend in the submitting author's place. All papers will be blind reviewed.

The 2009 Conference and Manuscript Boot-camp will be held on Thursday and Friday, October 8-9 at The Johns Hopkins University. The conference chair for the 2004 conference is Sharon Alvarez, Ohio State University. The conference co-chairs are David Deeds and Bill Schulze, case Western Reserve University. The event coordinator is Samuel Mathey.

Questions can be directed to Sharon Alvarez at alvarez_42@fisher.osu.edu or Samuel Mathey at mathey-apossan_1@fisher.osu.edu

Submissions should be sent as an attachment to mathey-apossan_1@fisher.osu.edu no later than August 8th. The submitting author should be identified on the title page.

The mission of SES is to enhance the quality of scholarship in the field of entrepreneurship. Its operational goal is to increase the flow of manuscripts about entrepreneurship that are submitted to and published in the top tier journals. The society sponsors an annual conference and manuscript boot-camp, as well as other activities aimed at increasing scholarly discourse about entrepreneurship. Our metric for success is the number and quality of papers about entrepreneurial topics membership. The society is not affiliated with any journal, other scholarly organization, or academic institution.

Manuscript Submission:          August 4, 2009
Acceptance Notification:        August 22, 2009
Final Manuscript Due:            September 22, 2009
Boot-camp date:                     October 8-9, 2009

Sample review guidelines for SES 2009 Paper evaluation:

The sole criteria for acceptance is the paper's potential for publication in a top tier journal. That is to say, papers should be evaluated on their promise and not the quality of the current manuscript. Problems with stated theory or flaws in methodology or data should be viewed as problems that can be solved, and not as a basis for rejection. Sample review guidelines are below:

• Does the paper address an interesting question?
• To what extent does it inform discussion of issues that are relevant across multiple social science disciplines?
• What is the paper's potential impact on the field of entrepreneurship?
• Can the conference add value to this paper?
• Are there fatal (or non correctable) flaws with the quality of the data, sample, and research design?
• Does the paper show editorial capability or promise?
• If you were serving as a senior scholar, how willing would you be to champion this paper?

A couple of weeks ago I called for comment on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' proposed new entrepreneurship questions in their next round of questions for the National Youth Longitudinal Survey 1979.  Since that time we have been engaged in a review ourselves and with Mathematica Policy Research, our survey vendor for the Kauffman Firm Survey.  As the deadline for comments is quickly approaching, I will be sending this by the close of business Thursday.  In the meantime, in the spirit of openness, I am posting a draft letter and attachments here.  We remain open to other ideas from scholars or individuals with survey research experience on this population. 

BLS.pdf (90.09 kb)

BLS attachment 1.pdf (106.66 kb)

BLS attachment 2.pdf (59.93 kb)

I don't know much about this conference but thought the lens with which the organizers seem to be looking at innovation is an interesting one.  We know from some of Ben Jones research, among others, that there is evidence of an age impact on innovation. Additionally, we know from a lot of entrepreneurship research that entrepreneurs often have a lot of accumulated work experience before striking out on their own.  

• Population dynamics, innovation and productivity
  
  Fondation du Risque Workshop
  Palais-Brongniart
  Friday, October, the 16th
  Chair “Risques et Chances de la Transition Démographique” will hold a workshop at Palais
  Brongniart, 28 Place de la Bourse, 75002 Paris, on 2009 October, the 16th.
  Items adressed during the workshop will be the following:
  - Aging and accumulation process of human capital
  - Demographic transition and structure of investments
  - Aging, consumption structures and innovation
  - Demographic transition and firm renewal

Wanted to highlight a conference we are helping to sponsor next week on the topic of patents and entrepreneurship at George Washington Law School.

• Date: Friday and Saturday, June 12 and 13, 2009
• Location: George Washington University Law School, 2000 H St. NW, Washington, DC 20052
• More Information: http://www.law.gwu.edu/Academics/FocusAreas/IP/Pages/Patents_IP_Event.aspx

Former IBN editor Thorsten Beck and our own Asli Demirguc-Kunt have recently updated and expanded the Financial Development and Structure Database, which provides statistics on the size, activity, efficiency and stability of banks, nonbanks, equity markets, and bond markets across countries and through time. Newly added indicators include measures of banking structure and financial globalization. In their paper “Financial institutions and markets across countries and over time - data and analysis,” which introduces the revised data base, they also use the data to analyze financial system trends across the globe. Thorsten and Asli find that financial systems have deepened over the past decades along many dimensions. However, this is only true in high-income countries. Similarly, cross-border lending and bond issues have increased, but again only among high-income countries. Low and lower-middle income countries, on the other hand, have benefitted from higher remittance flows. Although the data ends in 2007, thus preventing the authors from fully capturing the recent global financial crisis, they clearly see the boom period leading up to the crisis reflected in the data. Banks’ net interest margins decreased, pushing banks to diversify income sources, while profitability increased. At the same time, the z-score, a measure of stability, decreased and hit a historic low in 2007.

I have a lot of respect for the operation Denny Dennis runs at the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).  Denny is in charge of the small business polls that NFIB releases eight times a year looking at small businesses (under 250 employees, I believe).  NFIB, and I believe Denny, have been doing these continually for more than twenty years.  In that time, they have covered a lot of questions which are interesting but would never get asked by most federal agencies.  And in the last year they have taken the very forward-looking step of making all those survey questions available in a searchable interface which brings back both interesting survey data but also puts it in an easy to read format: 411 Small Business Facts

One of their weekly emails highlighted a recent question which I thought would have a lot of interest in the current environment:

• Was one or more of the mortgages taken out on this property to provide capital for your business?
  Twenty-six (26) percent of small employers who own their residence and have a mortgage on that property had one or more of the mortgages taken out on this property to provide capital for their business (Q#18d). Eighteen (18) percent of small employers took out one or more mortgages on their residence to provide capital for their business (Q#18d).