Noel D. Campbell

Pass a Law, Any Law, Fast! State Legislative Responses to the Kelo Backlash

In Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court left it to the states to protect property against takings for economic development. Since Kelo, thirty-seven states have enacted legislation to update their eminent domain laws. This paper is the first to theoretically and empirically analyze the factors that influence whether, in what manner, and how quickly states change their laws through new legislation. Fourteen of the thirty-seven new laws offer only weak protections against development takings. The legislative response to Kelo was responsive to measures of the backlash but only in the binary decision whether to pass any new law. The decision to enact a meaningful restriction was more a function of relevant political economy measures. States with more economic freedom, greater value of new housing construction, and less racial and income inequality are more likely to have enacted stronger restrictions, and sooner. Of the thirteen states that have not updated, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi are highly likely to do so in the future. Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York are unlikely to update at all.

Which State Policies Lead to U.S. Firm Exits? Analysis with the Economic Freedom Index

This research investigates the relationship between public policy and firm deaths in the U.S. states. Policies that promote firm births may increase or decrease firm deaths. We use components of the Economic Freedom of North America index as a metric to evaluate the relationship between increased government size and firm deaths for the 50 states during 1989–2004. Elements of economic freedom are significantly related to firm deaths but in conflicting directions. We find that in the relevant range, some increases in state policy lead to firm death more than others. The paper also discusses our results and the implications for both future academic research and public policy.

A (partial) review of entrepreneurship literature across disciplines

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to stimulate researchers’ interest by acquainting them with some aspects of the entrepreneurship literature they may not have known.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a non‐meta‐analytic literature review of several literatures in entrepreneurship.Findings – The entrepreneurship literature is vast and can be found in every discipline where humans and their behaviour are the object of analysis.Research limitations/implications – Because the entrepreneurship literature is so large and widespread, the paper reviews only a small, deliberately chosen sample of the literature.Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, no one has previously written a unified review of the market entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, and public choice.

Evidence of television exposure effects in AP Top 25 college football rankings.

A potential source of bias in the Associated Press (AP) Top 25 football rankings is television exposure. Using the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 college football seasons, the authors observe, all else equal, that AP voters change the ranking of teams differently on the basis of television exposure: The more often a team is televised, relative to the total number of own- and opponent-televised games, the greater the change in the number of AP votes that team receives, even after accounting for own and opponents on-field performance.

Multiple measures of US entrepreneurial activity and classical liberal institutions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a robustness check of the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and economic freedom. As a deliberate “robustness check,” the authors estimated various spatial measures of entrepreneurship found in the research literature, using the same estimator within a consistent model that included political institutions, proxied by the Economic Freedom of North America index. Like many exemplars in the literature, the authors’ focus was on the US states.Design/methodology/approach – The authors estimated models of five different measures of entrepreneurial activity in a model based on Reynolds, Storey, and Westhead (1994).Findings – The authors failed to replicate many of the results found in the literature. The various measures of entrepreneurship were related to different independent variables. Economic freedom was not a consistently significant predictor of entrepreneurial activity.Research limitations/implications – The empirical work focuses on the US st...

Searching For Wortman'S Rural Economic Development Zones: A Case Study Of Three Rural Electric Cooperatives

This study uses Wortmans Rural Economic Development Zones (Wortman, 1990a) and more recent work by Lyons (2002) as a point of departure to demonstrate entrepreneurship development suited to rural locations. We describe the current literature and rural electric cooperatives. Using a case method research design (Yin, 1994), we demonstrate the efforts of three modern rural electric cooperatives in the area of entrepreneurial development. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications to public policy makers, electric cooperative executives and researchers in the field of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial action and the rules of the game: An editorial to introduce the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy (JEPP). Design/methodology/approach – The paper outlines the primary objectives of JEPP. Findings – JEPP was created to encourage and disseminate quality research about the vital relationships among institutions, entrepreneurship and economic outcomes. JEPP?s aim is to improve the quality of scholarly and public discourse about entrepreneurship and development policies. In general, JEPP seeks high-quality articles that say something interesting about public policy, entrepreneurship and economic development. Originality/value – The editorial describes the thinking behind JEPP, and the journals objectives. JEPP welcomes all scholars and individuals with professional or personal interests in acquiring and sharing knowledge about institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic outcomes.

The black box: Unraveling family business succession

Using the family business succession, resourcebased view of firms, familiness, and organizational clan literatures, this article develops a model based on the ability of the family business to use familiness, a specific bundle of attributes deriving from a family’s culture, as a competitive advantage for the family firm. In particular, this resource-based framework of family business shows how familiness can distinguish between family firms that succeed beyond the second generation and those that do not. Implications for future research are discussed.

Omitted Variable Bias in the Link Between Planning and Performance

This article argues that existing research poorly specifies the link between planning and performance because of omitted variable bias. Researchers agree planning is a critical part of creating any new venture. Many researchers assess planning by whether a small firm has a written business plan. Unfortunately, efforts empirically to validate this relationship have been inconclusive. This article proposes that researchers should assess business plans both on the quality of the plan (and the planning process that produced it), and on the quality of the underlying business opportunity. Failure to account for both aspects of a business plan amounts to omitted variable bias, frustrating attempts to accurately estimate the true relationship.

Local Lobbying for State Grants: Evidence from Georgia's Hope Scholarship

Georgias HOPE Scholarship is a merit-based aid program intended to provide educational resources for qualified Georgia residents who attend college within the state. The sole determinant of HOPE eligibility is high school grade point average (GPA), which may differ by school district (county). The subjective nature of GPAs gives localities the ability to increase the consumption of education subsidies by lowering academic standards. Consistent with this analysis, the authors find systematic differences in grade assignments across counties, and proxies for local interest group pressure for grade manipulation are associated with greater HOPE eligibility.