Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). "Supervisor: Dr Chris Burt." "August 2008." Some appendices are in Russian. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-54).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Entrepreneurs make decisions that influence subsequent decisions and future performance. The dissertation studies such sequences of decisions by using dynamic programming. This approach allows one to describe the decision process over time and, in some cases, it prescribes how business performance can be improved. An analytical approach helps to contribute a new dimension to entrepreneurship research and it encourages multidisciplinary work by allowing existing methodologies from various (analytical) disciplines to be applied to entrepreneurial problems. The dissertation focuses on research questions that invoke effort allocation in sequential decision-making at early development stages of a new venture creation. The dissertation is composed of three separate research studies. What dominates the entrepreneur's decision process initially is the effort allocation problem in sharing time between an existing job and committing to the new venture. The first study describes how this time-sharing is done and characterizes when is the best time to leave the wage job and become a full-time entrepreneur. I also show that the optimal time-allocation policy is driven by the entrepreneur's tolerance for work and by how returns behave with respect to time allocation in the venture. It is important to understand resource allocations to internal activities such as product development and customer recruitment. The second study focuses on new product development and it investigates how the flow of a new venture's funding affects the development of a new product. I prescribe the optimal release time for the new product and describe how this strategy is affected by the expected amount of funding and its uncertainty. I also identify industrial and entrepreneurial characteristics that generate various behaviors for the rate of change in the return on product quality as investment in the product is increased. The newly developed product must be bought to make the business start-up successful. The third study investigates how an entrepreneur makes decisions over time in allocating effort to building and exploiting a customer base so as to maximize profit. I study what a rational entrepreneur will do when faced with the allocation of effort to different customer categories. I also provide guidelines for improving the performance of an entrepreneur who may not be acting optimally. In these three investigations a dynamic programming approach is utilized to study various sequential decision processes of an entrepreneur during the development process of new venture creation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Entrepreneurs make decisions that influence subsequent decisions and future performance. The dissertation studies such sequences of decisions by using dynamic programming. This approach allows one to describe the decision process over time and, in some cases, it prescribes how business performance can be improved. An analytical approach helps to contribute a new dimension to entrepreneurship research and it encourages multidisciplinary work by allowing existing methodologies from various (analytical) disciplines to be applied to entrepreneurial problems. The dissertation focuses on research questions that invoke effort allocation in sequential decision-making at early development stages of a new venture creation. The dissertation is composed of three separate research studies. What dominates the entrepreneur's decision process initially is the effort allocation problem in sharing time between an existing job and committing to the new venture. The first study describes how this time-sharing is done and characterizes when is the best time to leave the wage job and become a full-time entrepreneur. I also show that the optimal time-allocation policy is driven by the entrepreneur's tolerance for work and by how returns behave with respect to time allocation in the venture. It is important to understand resource allocations to internal activities such as product development and customer recruitment. The second study focuses on new product development and it investigates how the flow of a new venture's funding affects the development of a new product. I prescribe the optimal release time for the new product and describe how this strategy is affected by the expected amount of funding and its uncertainty. I also identify industrial and entrepreneurial characteristics that generate various behaviors for the rate of change in the return on product quality as investment in the product is increased. The newly developed product must be bought to make the business start-up successful. The third study investigates how an entrepreneur makes decisions over time in allocating effort to building and exploiting a customer base so as to maximize profit. I study what a rational entrepreneur will do when faced with the allocation of effort to different customer categories. I also provide guidelines for improving the performance of an entrepreneur who may not be acting optimally. In these three investigations a dynamic programming approach is utilized to study various sequential decision processes of an entrepreneur during the development process of new venture creation. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The research presented in this thesis considers the question of whether individual-level risk preferences are consistent or inconsistent across decision domains. For example, do people make the same decisions with respect to work, health and finance? Some previous authors have suggested that risk preferences are inconsistent, e. g. Kahneman and Tversky (1979), while others have put forward the idea that people have generalised tendencies to take or avoid risks, e. g. Sitkin and Pablo (1992). The work of Sitkin and Pablo was drawn upon to develop hypotheses concerning the conceptualisation and construction of risk propensity. Risk propensity was operationalised as the degree of consistency of cross-domain risk preferences. It was proposed that a propensity to take or avoid risks is associated with whether individuals have consistent tendencies across different decision domains, that personality will be a key predictor of risk propensity, and that inconsistent cross-domain risk preferences will be associated with risk domain-specific cognitive and emotional aspects of decision making. A survey measure was developed to assess risk and decision preferences both across and within the domains of work, health and finance. Biographical and personality factors were also measured. The sample comprised 360 participants drawn from five sample groups chosen to capture a range of risk preferences. The results showed that risk propensity can be conceptualised and measured in terms of the consistency of cross-domain risk preferences. People who were consistent in their risk preferences were characterised by the personality traits of emotional stability, low extroversion, low openness and high agreeableness. Additionally, consistent risk preferences were associated with relative consistency of attention to situational information and perceived risk. The majority of participants, however, had different risk preferences in different domains, and showed variability in their decision preferences. The implications of the research for understanding risk propensity and risk management are discussed.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 58 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Co-management is considered an alternative approach to fisheries management, however, not all co-managed fisheries have been successful. Most studies discussing the success and failure of co-management have emphasized economic and social attributes of success and failure, such as fishery rights and institutional arrangements. The effect on co-management of biological characteristics, such as the growth rate of the fish stock and the stock size, has gained little attention. This study investigates the influence of intrinsic growth rate (r) and relative stock size (B') on fishers' decision to cooperate with catch quotas. The concept of mixed strategies from game theory is incorporated with basic economic concepts and a biomass dynamics model to capture important aspects in a fishery cooperative. The discounting concept is applied to capture the fishers' tendency to cooperate (��[subscript i]). Profits from fishing are specified for each fisher within a 2 by 2 matrix with two players and two strategies (cooperative and non-cooperative). When both players have dominant strategies, where one player's best strategy coincides with the other player's best strategy, the game has a pure strategy equilibrium. Alternatively, the equilibrium outcome of the game is determined using mixed strategies. The results indicate that the biological parameters, r and B', influence fishers' cooperation. However, social parameters (��[subscript i]) and economic parameters (profit/cost ratio when the stock is at the carrying capacity) must also be considered. Furthermore, this study finds that the fishers are more likely to play the cooperative strategy over very wide ranges of r and B' when their tendencies to cooperate are high. In contrast, the fishers are more likely to play mixed strategy when their tendencies to cooperate are low. Having a large discrepancy between the fishers' tendencies to cooperate has less influence on the outcomes of the game than having high values for the fishers' tendencies to cooperate. The profit/cost ratio generally accentuates the most frequent outcomes of the game. For instance, if the outcomes are mostly mixed strategies, a higher ratio expands the mixed strategy outcomes over wider ranges of r and B'. / Graduation date: 2001