Esteban Lafuente

Costa Rica Institute of Technology (ITCR) · School of Business

The paper investigates the productivity level of technology transfer offices (TTOs) affiliated to Spanish public universities. The proposed approach allows the development of a framework that matches universities’ technology transfer concerns with the need to accurately analyze the role of the outcome configuration of TTOs. We analyze the productiv...

We evaluate how country-level entrepreneurship—measured via the national system of entrepreneurship—triggers total factor productivity (TFP) by increasing the effects of Kirznerian and Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. Using a database for 45 developed and developing countries during 2002–2013, we employ non-parametric techniques to build a world tec...

This study analyzes the efficiency of Spanish provinces in a model that incorporates occupational health and safety (OHS) policy controls and work accidents into the analysis. Building on productivity models rooted in non-parametric frontier methods, namely Data Envelopment Analysis, the proposed approach allows the development of a production func...

We employ the ‘benefit of the doubt’ approach rooted in non-parametric techniques to evaluate the entrepreneurial ecosystem of 71 countries for the period 2016. By scrutinizing the relative efficiency of countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystems, the proposed analysis of composite indicators allows the computation of endogenous (country-specific) weigh...

This paper investigates the learning patterns of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from heterogeneous work accidents (i.e., minor and severe and fatal accidents). Work safety cannot be overlooked, and the focus of this study on learning from failure allows to understand how SMEs match safety problems with solutions generated by past experie...

The concept of an ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ has become a major means for both theorizing and making policy decisions concerning entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development. The notion of an entrepreneurial ecosystem captures the way in which entrepreneurship is increasingly performed and undertaken via the innate interdependencies exis...

Despite the valuable contributions of earlier learning studies, the specific analysis of how entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) learn has been sidelined in the literature. Significant research opportunities remain open in various unexplored realms. By adopting a multidisciplinary perspective that combines a variety of fram...

We evaluate the co-innovation trajectory of firms adopting different collaborative innovation networks (i.e., vertical, horizontal, and institutional). The results of the empirical applications are obtained from a multilevel regression, and a Nash bargaining model estimated via data envelopment analysis on a sample of 734 enterprises from seven OEC...

The authors discuss how increased globalization, economic complexity and dynamism exacerbate contradictions between theoretical and empirical-driven arguments. In this discussion, the authors offer an analysis of the entrepreneurship paradox—that is, entrepreneurship is good for the economy but entrepreneurial activity is consistently higher in les...

Lafuente evaluates the determinants of countries’ total factor productivity in a nonparametric model that integrates differences in technology choices. The author finds that, for both OECD and non-OECD countries, technical change and total factor productivity growth are associated with higher rates of capital deepening. Results also indicate that t...

The world is today a more digitally integrated place; however, digital inequality still prevails and its repercussions (e.g., poor access to information, e-commerce, remote education, remote work, and remote healthcare) have aggravated with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this debate, Lafuente, Acs, and Szerb adopt a power-law approach to scrutinize digi...

In this book the authors explore and debate through a fine lens the economic, social, and policy approaches that characterize fruitful research on entrepreneurial ecosystems with economically meaningful implications for policy. The collection of chapters included in the book is an important manifestation that presents various challenges that exist...

This study evaluates the quality of the digital platform economy at the global scale by employing a network model rooted in nonparametric linear techniques (data envelopment analysis) on a sample of 116 countries for 2019. The proposed model is in accordance with the geographic diversity (country heterogeneity) and the multilayered structure charac...

There has been growing interest in service-augmented products and the subsequent formation of product-service innovation (PSI) ecosystems. Hence, the objective of this paper is to empirically address an unexplored aspect of PSI ecosystems research by offering answers as to whether territories develop more performant PSI ecosystems in terms of manuf...

By drawing on a business model lens, this study proposes that the competitive performance of servitization is higher for manufacturing firms selling long-lifespan products since they better develop the key elements required for transitioning towards integrated Business to Business (BtoB) solutions delivery. Additionally, the study argues that the m...

This study employs a Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BOD) weighting model that incorporates information generated via a participatory method—i.e., based on experts' opinion—to construct a composite indicator that evaluates the competitiveness level of Costa Rican counties during 2010–2016. The results of the empirical application based on the county competit...

We evaluate the main characteristics of the digital ecosystem of North American (USA and Canada) and 16 Latin American economies for 2019. By employing the ‘benefit of the doubt’ model rooted in non-parametric techniques to scrutinize a composite indicator designed to assess the digital ecosystem (i.e., the Digital Platform Economy (DPE) index), th...

While ecosystem theories and concepts have a relatively long history with both entrepreneurial ecosystems (Acs et al., 2017) and digital ecosystems (Li et al., 2012; Weill & Woerner, 2015), the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem and a platform-based economy concepts have emerged only recently (Elia et al., 2020; Nambisan, 2017; Sahut et al., 2019)....

The recent digital and information-technology revolution has had a major impact on entrepreneurship. Platform-based developments in particular have helped to drastically reduce transaction costs and increase the appearance of new business models. This Schumpeterian type of organizational innovation has given birth to trillion dollar businesses like...

In this section, we provide a basic analysis of digital entrepreneurship, which we called the DPE Index, for 116 countries from all continents and in all development stages. The calculation steps of the DPE Index are found in Appendix B.

The transition from a managed economy in the twentieth century to a platform economy in the twenty-first century is perhaps best summed up by Historian Niall Ferguson (2019) in his book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook. Ferguson starts his story in Italian city states, where a tower sits in the middle of...

Facilitating digital and entrepreneurship ecosystems is high on many government policy agendas. Many nations focus on developing the digital infrastructure, maintaining digital freedom and privacy, protecting users from cybercrime and piracy, improving the population’s digital literacy, and supporting technology-related startups. However, enhanceme...

This book presents the 2020 Digital Platform Economy Index (DPE Index). The DPE Index integrates two separate but related literatures on ecosystems, namely, the digital ecosystem and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This new framework situates digital entrepreneurship within the broader context of users, platforms, and institutions, such that two bio...

This study employs the “Benefit of the Doubt” method rooted in non-parametric techniques to evaluate the digital ecosystem of 116 countries for the year 2019. By scrutinizing the relative efficiency of countries’ digital ecosystem based on the Digital Platform Economy index (DPE index), the proposed analysis of composite indicators allows the compu...

Purpose This paper investigates how past performance changes, prior CEO replacements and changes in the chairperson impact CEO turnover in public and large private businesses. Design/methodology/approach We analyze 1,679 CEO replacements documented in a sample of 1,493 Spanish public and private firms during 1998–2004 by computing dynamic binary c...

Purpose This study evaluates the relationship between the entrepreneurial ecosystem and business competitiveness in four different contexts (i.e. France, Spain, Hungary and Costa Rica). Design/methodology/approach The study uses a sample of 348 manufacturing and knowledge-intensive business service firms operating in four countries with different...

Purpose This study aims to contrast the disparities in optimal competitiveness configurations across international economies. Additionally, we analyse the competitive efficiency across firms of different performance endowments to identify distinctions and determine whether standardised or customised competitiveness configurations are optimal. Desi...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-021-00467-8

From the perspective that a region’s industrial development mostly builds upon existing local capability endowments to form a trajectory of related diversifications, we argue that regions with a strong technology-based knowledge-intensive business service (T-KIBS) sector potentially have resource-based relatedness in their ‘knowledge space’ allowin...

This paper examines how different forms of accumulated exploitable knowledge—i.e., export experience with the current firm and past entrepreneurial experience—stimulate export destinations, defined as the number of foreign markets where businesses sell their products/services. The proposed hypotheses are tested on a unique sample of Costa Rican ent...

Territorial servitization is the analysis of how manufacturing firms and knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sectors collaborate in working towards a renaissance of manufacturing competitiveness within regions of developed economies. This editorial note provides four insights. First, it sums up the existing body of knowledge on the topic. S...

Purpose – This study aims to evaluate how the configuration of competitive pillars impacts businesses' competitive efficiency by using a non-parametric model, namely, data envelopment analysis (DEA), with a single constant input. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed DEA model evaluates technical inefficiency, which results from differences in...

This study employs a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with a single constant input to analyze the competitiveness performance of a unique sample of 103 knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) firms from Hungary, Spain, Colombia, and Costa Rica for the year 2017. Also, we assess how the configuration of competitive pillars—strengths and wea...

Purpose: The analysis of the interconnectedness between resources and capabilities, and the way businesses use them as competitive weapons is a central element of the strategic management literature. Finding the appropriate configuration of competitive pillars is particularly relevant for resource-constrained small businesses. Drawing on the resour...

The first version of the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI), at that time called the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), was issued in 2009. Since then, GEI has been published in every year. Altogether, we have eleven books reporting about the level of the entrepreneurship ecosystem for countries all over the five continents. The...

This study analyzes the relationship between work inspections—which are a relevant control mechanism of countries’ safety function—and the rate of work accidents in Europe. The empirical application is based on fixed-effects regression models on a sample of 24 European countries for the period 2008-2015. The results confirm the pro-cyclical relatio...

Purpose Building on the resource-based view and the configuration theory, the purpose of this study uses a systemic and multidimensional competitiveness index (CI) i.e. that incorporates system constraints among the 10 competitive pillars that form the index to assess the competitiveness level and the connection between competitiveness and economic...

This research examines firm boundary configurations for manufacturers' product-service offerings. We argue that the building of a product-service ecosystem through collaboration with service providers in certain types of business services can increase performance as a result of the superior knowledge-based resources coming from specialized partners...

This study evaluates the international market persistence of early exporting businesses. The relationship between time in the market and export propensity/intensity levels was analyzed to identify the persistence of the internationalization patterns of entrepreneurial ventures. The empirical application employs a pseudo-panel approach at the busine...

This paper examines the impact over international propensity of past negative entrepreneurial experience for those who re‐enter into entrepreneurial activity; referred to as resilient serial entrepreneurs. We first hypothesize on the effects over entrepreneurial re‐entry that such negative past experience may have and highlight the link between the...

This study analyzes how the entrepreneurial ecosystem and different types of entrepreneurship impact regional performance. By analyzing 121 European Union regions between 2012 and 2014, it is found that quantity (Kirznerian) entrepreneurship negatively impacts regional performance, while this effect turns positive in the case of quality (Schumpeter...

We examine the relationship between CEO, board and Chairman turnovers and future performance in banks with fully outside boards. Using a rich dataset on executive turnovers from Costa Rica, we find that ownership moderates the effect that control mechanisms have on performance. Our results indicate that executive turnovers followed by the appointme...

We examine the relationship between CEO, board and Chairman turnovers and future performance in banks with fully outside boards. Using a rich dataset on executive turnovers from Costa Rica, we find that ownership moderates the effect that control mechanisms have on performance. Our results indicate that executive turnovers followed by the appointme...

Global Competitiveness Project Costa Rica 2019: Country Report

Global Competitiveness Project Costa Rica 2019. Informe de Competitividad Empresarial para Cartago

This study analyzes the relationship between work inspections—which are a relevant control mechanism of countries’ safety function—and the rate of work accidents in Europe. The empirical application is based on fixed-effects regression models on a sample of 24 European countries for the period 2008-2015. The results confirm the pro-cyclical relatio...

This study evaluates how non-performing loans and different types of board turnover—which we link to performing directorship (natural turnover) and non-performing directorship (forced turnover)—impact the economic performance (ROA) of banks. The proposed model and hypotheses, based on the conformance and performance roles of boards, are tested on a...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between organisational learning capabilities (OLCs) and innovation performance (IP) in organisational contexts where knowledge creation and exploitation are the business’ main source of competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach: The study hypotheses are tested on a unique sa...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether business owners that simultaneously demonstrate past entrepreneurial experience and process agility have greater export propensity levels. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed hypotheses are tested using binary choice models relating past entrepreneurial experience and reported process...

This article investigates how contract employment practices adopted by universities—fixed-term contracts and permanent contracts—impact research productivity measured in terms of publications in scholarly journals. The empirical application considers the Spanish public higher education system for the period 2002–2008. We report an inverse U-shaped...

The analysis of how the development of knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sectors in certain territories contributes to rebuild the competitive advantage of manufacturing businesses – a process described as territorial servitization – has increasingly drawn scholarly and policy attention. The collection of nine papers in this special issue...

Knowledge-intensive business service firms (KIBS) have been found to be instrumental for the renaissance of local manufacturing sectors. The value-adding role of KIBS to local manufacturing performance is likely to vary according to the functions they fill within the local hybrid value chain. The research objective of the study presented in this pa...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyzes how board’s gender diversity, and more specifically a gender-balanced configuration – i.e. a proportion of women in the boardroom ranging between 40 and 60 percent – affects economic and risk-oriented performance in financial firms. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical application uses a rich...

This study evaluates how different forms of human capital—i.e., formal management studies, labor market experience and experience in multinational businesses—explain the export diversity of SMEs, defined as the number of foreign market destinations where the business sells its goods or services. The proposed hypotheses are tested using negative bin...

This study evaluates how different forms of human capital – i.e., formal management studies, labour market experience and experience in multinational businesses – explain the export diversity of SMEs, defined as the number of foreign market destinations where the business sells its goods or services. The proposed hypotheses are tested using negativ...

This is the annual report of the Global Entrepreneurship Index. The Global Entrepreneurship Index is a composite indicator of the health of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in a given country. The GEI measures both the quality of entrepreneurship and the extent and depth of the supporting entrepreneurial ecosystem. We’ve identified the 14 components...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of past entrepreneurial experience on the reported innovativeness of serial entrepreneurs’ subsequent ventures. Design/methodology/approach – Building on insights from the generative entrepreneurial learning process and from cognition theories, the authors propose that regardless of the...

Purpose: Increased globalization, economic complexity and dynamism exacerbate contradictions between theoretical and empirical-driven arguments. This study analyzes the entrepreneurship paradox-i.e., entrepreneurship is good for the economy but entrepreneurial activity is consistently higher in less developed and developing countries over time-thro...

Este documento analiza cómo distintas formas de capital humano afectan la decisión emprendedora. Para alcanzar este objetivo, se lleva a cabo una revisión de la literatura exis-tente para las variables de estudio, a saber, for-mación y autoconfianza como una habilidad percibida. Para la aplicación empírica se utilizó la información provista por la...

Purpose This study evaluates how different strategic choices related to the transitions in-and-out of exporting (export entry, export persistence, export exit) impact employment growth in Romanian small and medium-sized businesses. Design/methodology/approach Using linear regression models on a sample of 566 Romanian SMEs, we model employment gr...

This paper analyses how entrepreneurial role models alleviate the fear of entrepreneurial failure among people who are not yet involved in entrepreneurial activities. The proposed hypothesis are tested using a logistic regression model relating the presence of entrepreneurial role models and fear of failure on a unique sample drawn from the Costa R...

This study analyzes the ideal strategic trajectory for sustainable and traditional product innovation. Using a sample of 74 Costa Rican high-performance businesses for 2016, we employ fuzzy set analysis (qualitative comparative analysis) to evaluate how the development of sustainable and traditional product innovation strategies is conditioned by t...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how gender diversity in top management – i.e. boardroom and top management positions – affects business performance among Colombian public businesses. Design/methodology/approach Building on the upper echelon theory which emphasizes that gender in an important characteristic that influences top management’s d...

This paper investigates how the characteristics of operational processes—systematic and project-based—affect the impact of adopting the safety management systems on different performance metrics. The proposed approach allows the development of a framework which matches safety problems and risks encompassed by organizational tasks with solutions gen...

Purpose: This study analyzes work safety perceptions among workers and safety experts in the construction industry. Furthermore, we evaluate whether experiential learning—i.e., labor experience—and knowledge-enhancing practices—that we link to safety training—explain the differences in work safety perceptions of workers and safety experts by trigge...

The purpose of this paper is to unveil the existing complexities in the relationship between product-service innovation (PSI)-or servitisation-and firm performance that arise from the mismatch between theoretical predictions and empirical evidence. Whilst theoretical work suggests that there are a number of advantages for implementing PSI, quantita...

A data-driven approach to improving entrepreneurial ecosystems begins with taking stock of the current state of the ecosystem through the lens of cross-country comparable data. However, the job does not end there. Once the strengths and weaknesses of an ecosystem have been identified, it is helpful to examine their underlying causes (see our origin...

In previous GEI publications, we have described the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index methodology in detail. Here we describe the structure of the dataset and a short summary of the GEI methodology. As compared to the previous versions, the institutional components of the GEI have been reviewed and changed. Here, we provide a descriptio...

As a national phenomenon, entrepreneurship is much more than the mere rate of new businesses or self-employment rates. Within a territorial context, any definition of entrepreneurship should take into consideration the interconnectedness between individual actions and the institutional setting backing entrepreneurial actions which, ultimately, fuel...

The pillars of entrepreneurship in the ecosystem are many and complex. While a widely accepted definition of entrepreneurship is lacking, there is general agreement that the concept has numerous dimensions. We take this into account in creating the entrepreneurship index. Some businesses have a larger impact on markets, create more new jobs, and gr...

When the unemployment rate in the United States was 10% during the great recession, it was considered a catastrophe. However, the unemployment rate in most MENA countries is close to 30% and even higher in some other countries. This is a disaster for many parts of the world. It leads to desperation and violence as millions of youth struggle to surv...

While a focus on the entrepreneurial ecosystem may seem a novel approach to development, it is consistent with and even complementary to older, more traditional development strategies. As developing economies move from centralized economies to market economies, enterprise and entrepreneurship become important. “The emerging world, long a source of...

The objective of this study is to determine the effect of relevant variables related to strategic sources of financial resources—in our case, suppliers’ trade credit and use of financial institutions—over performance among Spanish construction firms. To test the proposed hypotheses, we employ panel-data techniques on a large dataset that includes i...

The paper presents the results of a case study that aims to investigate whether the presence of both bridging and bonding social capital, acting together, can stimulate entrepreneurial innovation within the wine industry at a regional level. The study also investigates the manner in which both types of social capital interact to motivate such innov...

The mainstream servitization literature mostly describes the success of manufacturing firms in integrating services for their corporate clients. However, the literature is relatively silent on how territories capitalize on the potential interconnectedness between manufacturing firms and the knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sector. The an...

The objective of this study is to determine the effect of relevant variables related to strategic sources of financial resources—in our case, suppliers’ trade credit and use of financial institutions—over performance among Spanish construction firms. To test the proposed hypotheses, we employ panel-data techniques on a large dataset that includes i...

This paper tests the efficiency hypothesis of the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship. Using a comprehensive database for 63 countries for 2012, we employ data envelopment analysis to directly test how countries capitalize on their available entrepreneurial resources. Results support the efficiency hypothesis of knowledge spillover entre...