The paper analyses consumer willingness to invest in a smart home and attempts to establish willingness to pay for various smart-home functionalities among Slovenian households in 2013. An econometric model for the contingent valuation responses that is consistent with an economic model of utility maximisation is formulated. The estimated results suggest that consumers positively perceive energy and security related smart-home functionalities, though willingness to pay (WTP) for any particular functionality is not found to be very high. In comparison to stated WTP, current market prices are mostly too high to expect higher penetration rates of smart home devices in the very near future. Household income, technology progressiveness, and energy conservation habits are found to positively influence purchases of smart-home functionalities.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22405350
In the paper authors focus on the role of management decisions for explaining the firm’s market exit. They hypothesise that both technical and cost efficiency are important exit determinants and that they are a result of firm's management decisions. They show that technical and cost efficiency are a decisive market exit factor in Slovenian firms. Further, technical efficiency is important in a favourable macroeconomic environment, in which circumstances the survival of a firm is put in jeopardy when it lags behind its competitors with respect to technical efficiency. Cost efficiency is more important for a firm’s market exit in unfavourable macroeconomic conditions, in which managers make a serious mistake by ignoring input prices and delaying changes in the input mix. They thus show that in times of unfavourable macroeconomic conditions economic policy should implement measures that lower the transaction costs of input substitution, such us employment and labour market flexibility and investment supporting measures. Policies aimed at encouraging innovation are more appropriate for times with stable macroeconomic conditions.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22645734
Although the scholarly conversation about how entrepreneurial opportunities emerge has suggested that entrepreneurs both discover and create opportunity components, specific knowledge about what components are discovered is lacking. In this research, authors use an exploratory case study to investigate the opportunity creation process. They found that entrepreneurs discover several opportunity-related components based on the prior experience and knowledge of other entrepreneurs. Drawing on the evidence from these exploratory cases, they identify three important types of components that entrepreneurs creatively recombine within an emerging opportunity: technology stack, business model, and product and service design architecture. These findings have important implications for the understanding of entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial recycling, and their connection to the process of opportunity creation.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22551270
The paper explains right to travel from philosophical perspective – as basic and equal right for all the world citizens. It explains the concept of world citizenship and national citizenship and how both relate to justice and responsibility for sustainable tourism development. It suggests extended understanding of just international tourism, which has the ability to balance unequal travel propensity of travelling and non-travelling nations which means unequal consumption of world resources. The solution to unbalanced consumption and travel distribution is presented through tradable tourism certificates and tourism certificate exchange. Certificate exchange balances surplus and minus in travel participation and creates financial flows from traveling towards non-traveling (less developed) nations. The new financial resources should be used for development, on the account of non-participation of consumption of world resources through (non)traveling.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22401766
Internet and the related information and communications technologies (the ICTs) are profoundly shaping economic transactions of all kinds. They are also expected to open up entrepreneurial opportunities and reduce the competitive advantage of large firms, thus making room for small and young firms. The EU policy makers have already started to introduce policy initiatives for better use of ICT into the actions to support entrepreneurship, such as promoting digital entrepreneurship. At the moment, however, we have scarce empirical evidence about the impact of ICT on entrepreneurial activity. Our study provides such evidence, by investigating the relationship between ICT use and startup rates, using longitudinal industry level data for Slovenia. The results of the regression analysis show that entry rates are higher in industries that are characterized by higher ICT use, thus providing support for the government policy efforts.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22467302