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Previous studies have underscored the economic importance of the role of the entrepreneur, and empirical studies testing the nature of the entrepreneur are notably lacking. This study directly addresses this issue by examining newly gathered field data which captures the decision making and risk behaviors for a group of high-technology entrepreneurs. Two decision making tasks were used to elicit risk aversion measures and to test for any 'joy of winning' or judgmental errors, possibly in the form of over optimistic behavior. These elicitations were made with the use of multiple price formats and winner's curse experiments. 62 responses were collected from subjects at the 2004 national Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) conference in Atlanta, March 2004. From these 62 responses a subject pool of 33 entrepreneurs and 29 non-entrepreneurs were identified. Statistical methods were employed to assign risk aversion measures and identify any 'joy of winning' or judgmental errors for the entrepreneur (treatment) group compared with the non-entrepreneur (control) group. Findings show that entrepreneurs exhibit less risk aversion, but show no statistically meaningful difference in judgmental errors compared to their non-entrepreneur counterparts. However, there is evidence to support the claim that both entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs exhibit a 'joy of winning', and that the size of the effect is larger for entrepreneurs.

:Nachleben und Populärkultur

The resource curse, also known as the “paradox of plenty”, basically states that countries that have natural resources in abundance, particularly in terms of non-renewable resources such as oil and gas and minerals, in the long run tend to have less economic growth and prosperity, than countries with relatively lesser endowments of natural resources. This research investigates the case of the Chilean economy; its erstwhile saltpeter mining industry and current copper mining industry. The study attempts to answer the research question of whether Chile is still under the resource curse. Through the facts of the case study, semi-structured formal and informal interviews and extensive literature review, the researcher identified four main outcomes of the resource curse which are true to the Chilean history and current events; plundering of national wealth by political leaders, weak policy enforcements and military challenges to the government and the subsequent threats to the country’s democracy. The results of the case study suggest that, Chile is indeed still under the resource curse. The researcher draws on economic theory by Joseph Schumpeter in his most celebrated publication, “The theory of Economic Development” to gain understanding into the Chilean reality of economic under development and any other possible factors besides the resource curse, mainly lack of entrepreneurial ambitions by the human capital of the economy. The study contrasts, Schumpeter’s economic theory to Marxist economic theory of total control of nation states’ resources by governments and the Keynesian economic theory of government intervention aimed at supporting growth.

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Bakgrund: Resursförbannelsen innebär att det finns ett negativt samband mellan mängden naturtillgångar och ekonomisk tillväxt. På grund av detta är det få resursrika länder som nått sin fulla potential. Tidigare forskning har mestadels bestått av ekonometriska modeller som bevisar detta negativa samband mellan naturresurser och ekonomisk tillväxt, vilket motiverat oss till att genomföra en kvalitativ analys.  Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att genom en jämförelse av två likvärdiga länder analysera och förklara varför DR Kongo drabbats av resursförbannelsen medan Botswana undkom den. Uppsatsen syftar vidare till att jämföra utifrån tre ekonomiska teorier: holländska sjukan, rent seeking samt institutionell teori. Metod: För att uppnå syftet med uppsatsen används en komparativ metod. Länderna har valts utifrån deras likheter då både Botswana och DR Kongo befinner sig i Sub-Sahara Afrika, har en historia av kolonisering och är rika på mineraler. Metoden är lämplig vid jämförelse av länder. Därför är metoden motiverad att använda när vi jämför hur ett överflöd av naturresurser påverkar Botswanas och DR Kongos ekonomiska utveckling.  Slutsats: De i uppsatsen framkomna bevisen tyder på att DR Kongo har drabbats av resursförbannelsen eftersom vi kan se att holländska sjukan, rent seeking och svaga institutioner förekommer i landet. Alla dessa faktorer bidrar till resursförbannelsen. Till skillnad från Botswana som varken har drabbats av holländska sjukan eller rent seeking. Botswana har även haft stabila institutioner under lång tid. Slutsatsen vi drar är att institutioner är den viktigaste faktorn när det kommer till hur ett land kan undvika resursförbannelsen. / Background: The Resource Curse implies that there is a negative relation between the amount of natural resources and economic growth. Because of this few resource rich countries have reached their full potential. Previous research has mostly consisted of econometric models that prove this negative relation, which has pursued us to conduct a qualitative analysis.  Purpose: The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to compare two equivalent countries to analyze and explain why DR Congo has suffered from the Resource Curse while Botswana escaped it. The thesis further aims to compare based on three economic theories: Dutch disease, rent seeking and institutional theory.  Method: To achieve the purpose a comparative method is used. The countries have been chosen based on their similarities. Both Botswana and DR Congo are located in Sub-Saharan Africa, have a history of colonization and are rich in minerals. This method is appropriate for comparison of countries. Therefore this method is motivated to use when we compare how an abundance of natural resources affect Botswana’s and DR Congo’s economic growth.  Conclusion: The results from the thesis imply that DR Congo has suffered from the Resource Curse since Dutch disease, rent seeking and weak institutions exist in the country. All of these factors contribute to the Resource Curse. In comparison to Botswana who has not suffered from Dutch disease or rent seeking. Botswana has had strong institutions for a long time. Our conclusion is that institutions are the main element when it comes to escaping the Resource Curse.

Yes / This paper critically revisits the debate on natural resource rent, curse and conflict, interrogating some of the key assumptions that have become received knowledge in extant discourses. The paper demonstrates how orthodox theories’ preoccupation with issues of resource rent and resource curse tend to be marred by slants of ahistoricity and state-centricity. Adopting a stakeholder approach to the issues of resource rent and conflict in Africa, the author argues that natural resource rents produce and attract a multiplicity of competitive stakeholders, both domestic and external, in the resource-rich states. The competition and jostling of stakeholders for access to, and appropriation of, rentier resources is too often an antagonistic process in many emerging economies that has consequences and implications for violent conflict. The paper attempts a new conceptual explanation of how natural resource rents dialectically generate stakes, stakeholders and political conflict. The paper concludes by proposing the need for the more conflict-prone African rentier states to transition to a more functional state model, the transformative state.

Thesis advisor: Geoffrey Sanzenbacher / Despite growing importance in the global economy, many of the countriees with large natural resource economies are among the poorest. In this paper, I first construct a theoretical model that provides a framework for the harm of natural resources on corruption levels and governance. Then, I construct what I call the Resource Volatility Index. This measures both a country's level of dependence on a category of resources and the price volatility of these resources themselves. Finally, I use Correlated Random Effects models to show that both average and year-varying levels of this index can explain the level of corruption and the quality of governance in a given country. The nagative impacts I find on both variables confirms previous economic theory on governments funded by natural resources. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics. / Discipline: Scholar of the College.

Ein zunehmend wichtiges Thema in der Informatik ist der Umgang mit Ähnlichkeit in einer großen Anzahl unterschiedlicher Domänen. Derzeit existiert keine universell verwendbare Infrastruktur für die Ähnlichkeitssuche in allgemeinen metrischen Räumen. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, die Grundlage für eine derartige Infrastruktur zu legen, die in klassische Datenbankmanagementsysteme integriert werden könnte. Im Rahmen einer Analyse des State of the Art wird der M-Baum als am besten geeignete Basisstruktur identifiziert. Dieser wird anschließend zum EM-Baum erweitert, wobei strukturelle Kompatibilität mit dem M-Baum erhalten wird. Die Abfragealgorithmen werden im Hinblick auf eine Minimierung notwendiger Distanzberechnungen optimiert. Aufbauend auf einer mathematischen Analyse der Beziehung zwischen Baumstruktur und Abfrageaufwand werden Freiheitsgrade in Baumänderungsalgorithmen genutzt, um Bäume so zu konstruieren, dass Ähnlichkeitsanfragen mit einer minimalen Anzahl an Anfrageoperationen beantwortet werden können. / A topic of growing importance in computer science is the handling of similarity in multiple heterogenous domains. Currently there is no common infrastructure to support this for the general metric space. The goal of this work is lay the foundation for such an infrastructure, which could be integrated into classical data base management systems. After some analysis of the state of the art the M-Tree is identified as most suitable base and enhanced in multiple ways to the EM-Tree retaining structural compatibility. The query algorithms are optimized to reduce the number of necessary distance calculations. On the basis of a mathematical analysis of the relation between the tree structure and the query performance degrees of freedom in the tree edit algorithms are used to build trees optimized for answering similarity queries using a minimal number of distance calculations.