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We provide a partial equilibrium model wherein AI provides abilities combined with human skills to provide an aggregate intermediate service good. We use the model to find that the extent of automation through AI will be greater if (a) the economy is relatively abundant in sophisticated programs and machine abilities compared to human skills; (b) the economy hosts a relatively large number of AI-providing firms and experts; and (c) the task-specific productivity of AI services is relatively high compared to the task-specific productivity of general labor and labor skills. We also illustrate that the contribution of AI to aggregate productive labor service depends not only on the amount of AI services available but on the endogenous number of automated tasks, the relative productivity of standard and IT-related labor, and the substitutability of tasks. These determinants also affect the income distribution between the two kinds of labor. We derive several empirical implications and identify possible future extensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of future directions for research related to refugee entrepreneurship. It puts forward key concepts, explores the relations within the current broader literature on migration and entrepreneurship, and identifies several promising clusters of questions. We also introduce five papers in a special section of this issue, which offer nuanced findings and cues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an early evaluation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) against COVID-19. The main areas where AI can contribute to the fight against COVID-19 are discussed. It is concluded that AI has not yet been impactful against COVID-19. Its use is hampered by a lack of data, and by too much data. Overcoming these constraints will require a careful balance between data privacy and public health, and rigorous human-AI interaction. It is unlikely that these will be addressed in time to be of much help during the present pandemic. In the meantime, extensive gathering of diagnostic data on who is infectious will be essential to save lives, train AI, and limit economic damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An arms race for an artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be detrimental for and even pose an existential threat to humanity if it results in an unfriendly AGI. In this paper, an all-pay contest model is developed to derive implications for public policy to avoid such an outcome. It is established that, in a winner-takes-all race, where players must invest in R&D, only the most competitive teams will participate. Thus, given the difficulty of AGI, the number of competing teams is unlikely ever to be very large. It is also established that the intention of teams competing in an AGI race, as well as the possibility of an intermediate outcome (prize), is important. The possibility of an intermediate prize will raise the probability of finding the dominant AGI application and, hence, will make public control more urgent. It is recommended that the danger of an unfriendly AGI can be reduced by taxing AI and using public procurement. This would reduce the pay-off of contestants, raise the amount of R&D needed to compete, and coordinate and incentivize co-operation. This will help to alleviate the control and political problems in AI. Future research is needed to elaborate the design of systems of public procurement of AI innovation and for appropriately adjusting the legal frameworks underpinning high-tech innovation, in particular dealing with patenting by AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do the presence and nature of entrepreneurship impact on national happiness, and are nations with happy citizens better for entrepreneurs to start new businesses? To provide tentative answers we survey the literature on entrepreneurship and subjective well-being and use various data sources to uncover the first evidence of the relationship between entrepreneurship and happiness at the country level. We find that opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship may contribute to a nation's happiness but only to a certain point, at which the effects of happiness begin to decline. Moreover, our results suggest that a nation's happiness affects early-stage opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How responsive are migrant remittances to various disasters, both natural and human-made? Would remittances be affected by systemic financial crises, such as the 2008-09 financial crisis, or more recent crises affecting the Eurozone? Using panel data on 23 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1980 to 2007, we find that remittances are slow to respond to natural disasters, unresponsive to outbreaks of conflict, and will slowly decline following a systemic financial crisis. This suggests that, given its stability, remittances are sources of resilience in SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss relationship between export diversity and economic performance, focusing on Brazil, China, India and South Africa (BCIS). Using time data on exports over the period 1962–2000 and Applied General Equilibrium (AGE) models for each country, we note the similarities as well as differences in the patterns of diversification in these countries. We find evidence of a U-shape relationship between per capita income and export specialization in at least China and South Africa, and given that the results from Granger causality testing are inconclusive and not robust with regards to export diversification measures, some preliminary evidence from the results suggest that export diversification Granger causes GDP per capita in Brazil, China and South Africa, but not in India, where it is rather GDP per capita changes that are driving export diversification. From AGE modeling we find that South Africa differs from the other economies in that it is the only case where export diversification has an unambiguously positive impact on economic development while in contrast in Brazil, China and India, it is rather export specialization that is preferred. We show that the manner in which export diversification is obtained may be important: if it is obtained with less of a reduction in traditional exports, the impacts are better (less negative). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the importance of transport costs in new venture internationalisation, i.e. of firms that start exporting before they are 3 years of age. It does so by merging two large international datasets, on the firm level (covering 49,584 firms) as well as on the country level (covering 154 countries). It is found that transport costs matter significantly for new venture internationalisation, for older firms' decision to export, as well as the extent of the latter's subsequent exports. Export costs, the quality of transport infrastructure and domestic logistics costs affect new venture internationalisation even when controlling for a range of standard determinants. New international ventures behave differently from older firms in two important ways: (1) Transport costs affect the probability that they will export but not the extent of their subsequent exports and (2) their probability of exporting is affected negatively by their networking, domestic success and ISO status, whilst in the case of older firms, these factors have a positive impact. Various recommendations for policy and further research are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data on 3,948 Chinese firms obtained from the World Bank’s Investment Climate Private Enterprise Survey to investigate early international entrepreneurship (international new ventures) in China. The extent of early international entrepreneurship in China is significant: 62% of the exporting firms start export operations within 3 years. Foreign shareholders within the firm and an entrepreneur with previous exporting experience are noted to significantly increase the probability that a firm internationalizes early. We find marked differences in the behaviour of indigenous and foreign-invested firms, and between direct and indirect exporters. For example, for an indigenous firm the more foreign experience its entrepreneur has, the less likely it is to start exporting early. As far as indirect exporting is concerned, business networks are significant determinants of the extent of such exporting, but delays the internationalization process of indigenous firms. The more firms in China export, the more time their managers need to spend on government regulations, although perhaps counter-intuitively, this was not found to discourage exporting. Overall, the findings suggest that exporting by indigenous Chinese firms is often due to challenging or adverse domestic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an introduction to this special issue of Small Business Economics dealing with the (long-postponed) integration of entrepreneurship into the discipline of development economics and casting a formal light on the role of entrepreneurship in developing countries. The paper departs from the premise that with more than a billion people living in absolute poverty, it is of great practical importance to understand if and when entrepreneurship is a binding constraint on economic development and catching up in developing countries. This in turn requires at least a deeper theoretical modeling of the entrepreneur in development economics. This special edition contains a number of contributions emanating from the UNU-WIDER project on Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity, which integrates the disciplines of entrepreneurship and development economics. These contributions model and explore the role of the entrepreneur in key areas of concern for development economics, such as structural change and economic growth, income and wealth inequalities, welfare, poverty traps, and market failures. This introduction discusses and contextualizes these various contributions and their implications for further theoretical and empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an endogenous growth model to illuminate the role of entrepreneurial start-up firms in structural economic transformation. We follow the Lewis-model distinction between a traditional and modern sector and underpin this distinction with micro-foundations. We specify mature and start-up entrepreneurs and make a distinction between survivalist self-employment activities in the traditional sector and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship in the modern. The model shows how opportunity-driven entrepreneurship can drive structural transformation in both the modern and traditional sectors through innovation and the provision of intermediate inputs and services (which permits greater specialization in manufacturing) and by increasing employment and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on the non-economic quality of life have been (a) on a national level or performed on cross-country comparisons, and/or (b) used subjective indicators to measure how people perceive their non-economic quality of life. In this paper, our main contribution is to construct objective indicators of the non-economic quality of life for 354 sub-national magisterial districts in South Africa. We also compare changes in these indicators over time, and consider methodological issues in the construction of objective indicators of non-economic quality of life. We find that although income does matter for the overall quality of life, non-income components of the quality of life can make an important difference. We find a number of places with low incomes that have been able to achieve higher than expected outcomes in terms of the non-economic quality of life, and that some of the relative income poor areas have improved their non-economic ranking between 1996 and 2004. We also find that the geographical/environmental quality of life in South Africa is better in non-urban areas, where fewer of the country’s population is residing. Significant improvements in the overall quality of life may be achieved through improvements in the urban natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]