Alexandre Padilla

Indirectly productive entrepreneurship

Purpose - – Since Baumol (1990), the economic literature has distinguished between two broad categories of entrepreneurship: productive and unproductive. The purpose of this paper is to introduce another subcategory: indirectly productive entrepreneurship. Sometimes, profit-seeking entrepreneurs allocate their talents to indirectly productive activities to mitigate the new costs market participants endure as a result of a government regulation. The resources used to mitigate these costs must be diverted from other uses. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper uses the example of cell phone storage outside New York City’s high schools to illustrate an indirectly productive entrepreneurial activity that mitigates the inefficiencies or costs created by a regulation. These costs and the resulting entrepreneurship would not have arisen absent the regulation. Findings - – These profit opportunities do not result from market entrepreneurial errors or successes but emerge from inefficiencies or unintended consequences produced by government regulations. When evaluating such entrepreneurship, the question is whether such regulation is desirable from an efficiency viewpoint because such entrepreneurship, while making such regulation less inefficient or less costly, diverts resources from other lines of production. Originality/value - – This paper identifies a new category of entrepreneurship: indirectly productive entrepreneurship. This paper also shows that government regulation often deters productive entrepreneurship. However, under some circumstances, regulation can indirectly encourage productive entrepreneurship by creating artificial profit opportunities that would not have existed otherwise.

Self-Regulation in the Adult Film Industry: Why Are HIV Outbreaks the Exception and Not the Norm?

This paper analyzes how self-interest and long-term profit expectations provided the necessary incentives for the adult film industry to self-regulate and to find mechanisms to minimize the risks of HIV outbreaks that could result from the asymmetric information and network effects that characterize the industry. With the help of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), the adult film industry developed a corporate culture to facilitate widespread coordination among members and to make the industry similar to a private club. First, I discuss the predicted effects of asymmetric information and network-effect problems on the industry in terms of HIV outbreaks. Second, I tell the story of AIM and present the policies the industry has adopted since AIMs creation to mitigate those predicted effects. In particular, I discuss how the industry managed the 2004 HIV outbreak without government intervention. Finally, I present statistics comparing HIV infection rates in the industry and general population as well as additional observations to assess the relative effectiveness of the industry in preventing and containing HIV outbreaks.