Per L. Bylund

• Ph.D., University of Missouri
• Professor (Assistant) at Oklahoma State University

Entrepreneurship has been expunged from contemporary mainstream economics despite being an important driver and cause of economic development and growth. However, whereas Evolutionary Economics recognizes value-creative entrepreneurship, its role and impact tend to still be understated and the vast implications not fully understood. This Element at...

The replication crisis has cast social science’s epistemological foundations into question. So far, entrepreneurship scholars have responded by advocating more transparency in data collection and analysis, better empirical methods, and larger and more representative data. Here, we explore the possibility that the problem may be innate to empiricism...

We advance the judgement-based approach at the foundational level to establish cognitive microfoundations and boundary conditions as a formal theory of entrepreneurship – entrepreneurial judgement theory (EJT). We build upon philosophy’s concept of intentionality to define and conceptualise judgement as the determination and instigation of intentio...

This seminal Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary research on economic freedom, using multidisciplinary methods to assess studies of the determinants and consequences of market-oriented institutions and policies. Niclas Berggren brings together world-leading experts in their respective fields to explore the notion of economic...

This chapter is a combined biographical note and summary of the ideological journey of Per Bylund.

Purpose In this paper, the authors suggest that Central Americans can use entrepreneurship to solve economic uncertainty in their home country and that entrepreneurship can contribute to reducing the number of undocumented migrants to the USA. Design/methodology/approach The authors first illustrate the context of Central American illegal migratio...

This article was prompted by Kelton and is a belated response to Wray (2016), who presents an argument for the so-called chartalist view that government currency is valued because it can be “redeemed” in tax payments. Wray’s article presents historical cases to back up the idea. This article responds to the arguments therein, and the chartalist pos...

How can cryptocurrency gain legitimacy in the eyes of users? Drawing upon the theories of institutional uncertainty and legitimacy, we propose a process model in which legitimacy for cryptocurrencies acquired at the market level via rhetorical strategies (i.e. evasive action) will reduce uncertainty in the formal institutional environment. This red...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how research on the intersection of public policy and entrepreneurship has been bounded by its static approach and how a processual analysis based on Austrian economics can advance the understanding of the subject matter. Design/methodology/approach Rooted in the Austrian school of economics, this...

We comment on a recent article by Lopes (2021), whose argument regarding the writing of the history of the socialist calculation debate is unfortunately burdened by a misconception of both the substance and nature of the argument that ignited the debate. Bringing additional sources from this time to scholars’ attention, we show that there is much m...

We construct a discrete choice experiment to study opportunity evaluation by entrepreneurs. This new method in entrepreneurship studies allows us to measure entrepreneurs’ utility functions and thereby their perceptions of opportunity. Consequently, we produce empirical evidence for how entrepreneurs evaluate opportunities beyond the objective fact...

Kirzner (2019) develops an Austrian perspective to critique Friedman’s universal ethic for profit, specifically for not including a rationale for entrepreneurial discovery of pure profit. In this article, I assess Kirzner’s argument, drawing from the theory originally developed by Carl Menger in his groundbreaking Principles of Economics. I specifi...

The aim of this article is to expound the subjectivist position on the concept of ‘rationality.’ To begin, we review the longstanding and still ongoing debate in philosophy over the differences (or not) between the natural and social sciences. While positivism, which supposes no difference between the sciences, has been the tradition whence the eco...

Frank H. Knight's magnum opus Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit , published in 1921, is widely recognized for introducing and establishing the distinction between risk and uncertainty. It is also known for developing a novel theory of the firm and business profit based on entrepreneurial judgment. However, the work's relevance for institutionalism has...

For many years, the ideas of Knight and Keynes have been widely understood to overlap greatly and they are presumed to have developed notions of uncertainty that deeply intersect, both describing a state where outcomes have non-probabilistic likelihoods. Furthermore, even their political philosophies are historically somewhat homogenised, both cons...

As design science advances into the foreground of entrepreneurship theory, we see a meta-theoretical tension between Simon's classic exposition of design and entrepreneurship theory's foundations within the Austrian school of economics. To resolve this tension, we argue that design science is mispositioned atop the conventional positivism that Simo...

Financial institutions in developing economies fail to provide entrepreneurs with access to finance to grow their businesses. This severely hampers economic development in these countries. We seek to explain why and develop an argument and model based on Knight's theory, which we augment in two ways. First, by describing problems embedded in financ...

Formal economic models of entrepreneurship have two characteristics: they model entrepreneurship as an allocation of resources, and they identify common factors affecting this allocation. These common factors are represented as parameters of optimization models, and they are evaluated at the market level. We argue that although these models are use...

Whereas most countries in the COVID‐19 pandemic imposed shutdowns and curfews to mitigate the contagion, Sweden uniquely pursued a more voluntarist approach. In this article, our interest is primarily on how and why Sweden's approach to the pandemic was so unique. There are two parts to this research question: (1) why did virtually all other nation...

We produce a definition and argument for explicitly adopting value subjectivism in entrepreneurship research. While the field has progressively shifted toward subjectivism over the past decades, we remain saddled with positivist baggage in our theories’ definitions of key variables, including the concept of value. Although modern scholars readily a...

Austrian economics is the only school of economic thought that is well represented in the study of entrepreneurship. Austrian theories, concepts, and perspectives on entrepreneurship make up an important part of what is modern entrepreneurship theory. Yet while entrepreneurship scholars often take inspiration or even borrow from Austrian economics,...

Entrepreneur-promoters, or the pioneers of economic improvement, provide an essential market function which economics cannot do without. Yet Ludwig von Mises maintains that this function lies beyond what can be defined with praxeological rigor. This paper attempts to find a praxeological subcategory of entrepreneurship that conforms with Mises’s in...

In this issue, Elert and Henrekson observe that Austrian economic theory is lacking with respect to explaining formal governance in the economy, and suggest drawing from, if not incorporating, re-cent work on the collaborative innovation bloc. This, they argue, would make Austrian economics more relevant to policy. I elaborate on and specify the th...

Inspired by Vargo & Lusch’s Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) and relying on the Austrian School’s individualism and subjectivism, we use knowledge from economics to better support the discussion of the primary topic of Marketing: that of value creation. Specifically, we draft a Value-Dominant Logic. We provide ten foundational premises stemming from th...

s include: "Entrepreneurship, Uncertainty, and Judgment: A Model for Understanding the Uncertainty Borne by Entrepreneurs," by Per Bylund "The Perceived Phantom Opportunity: Bridging the Gap between Perception and Actualization," by Michael Caston, Nicole Flink, Lee Grumbles, and Clint Purtell "Should Libertarians Reject the Title Transfer Theory o...

Despite a developing literature exploring the relationship between regulation, taxation and business startups, few studies have utilized artefactual experimental methods to link the choices made by entrepreneurs to an underlying regulatory framework or tax system. Using information collected from a discrete choice experiment where 182 small busines...

In this article we respond to recent research that suggests that some entrepreneurship arises out of the disinhibitions of entrepreneurs and, thus, occurs without judgment. We challenge this view and contend that impulsive behaviors can and ought to be understood within the framework of judgment and, thus, as rational human action. Under a broader,...

Research Summary We reexamine and explore the modern view of inequality against entrepreneurial market process theories, which leads us to three key assertions. First, we question the validity of income inequality as a proxy for true inequality (i.e., inequality of individual well‐being), observing nonlinearity between the two constructs. Second, w...

Uncertainty and institutions are each vital concepts in entrepreneurship research. However, little work has been done to combine them into a consistent conceptual framework for analyzing the dynamic aspects of entrepreneurial action, uncertainty, and institutional change. Using insights from new institutional economics, we develop a model that expl...

Two years ago, in an article in this journal, Andy Denis revisited and added to the Socialist Calculation Debate, one of the 20th century’s greatest debates in economic theory. Denis argued that Austrian economists draw unsupported conclusions from their argument in claiming that private rather than several property is necessary for economic calcul...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate effects of policy initiatives on entrepreneurs’ opportunity evaluation decisions. Design/methodology/approach – Factors were selected from real world policy initiatives. The model pricing power as a traditional economic base rate attribute and then considering how variance in use fees and repor...

This article simulates Ronald Coase’s transaction cost approach to firm organizing using agent based modeling, and contextualizes and contrasts it with a division-of-labor/specialization view of the firm that Coase challenged and sought to replace. The simulation tests the firm formation process based on the different implications of transaction co...

Entrepreneurs investing for profits in the unknown future are ultimately specialists in bearing uncertainty. This is the traditional definition of entrepreneurship. Yet under conditions where the political regime adds an additional layer of uncertainty to market actors, evidence suggests that entrepreneurial profit-seeking is often limited. We stud...

Inequality has recently been a topic of great social, political, and academic interest. We explore the entrepreneurial microfoundations of inequality, in terms of income and of quality of life. Specifically, we draw on the seminal work of Schumpeter and Kirzner to develop a two-process economic growth model that helps to explain the growing and shr...

It has become commonplace in management research to refer to “transaction cost theory,” a joint Coase-Williamson approach to economic organizing. This off-the-cuff usage tends to tone down or even overlook their differences by treating Coase as a pre-Williamsonian. I review Coase’s and Williamson’s original works to determine in what ways their the...

The theory of the firm has been fertile ground for economists. Bylund proposes a new theory, rooted in Austrian economics, which examines the firm as a part of the market, and not as a free-standing entity. In this integrated view, a theory is offered which incorporates entrepreneurship, production, market process and economic development.

We analyze and compare the opportunity discovery and opportunity creation theories of entrepreneurship from a point of view of the market process within which entrepreneurial action takes place. Uncovering and elaborating on the theories’ fundamental assumptions, we discuss their long-term implications and what type of market process they engender....

We study the rationale for integrating production in firms from an evolutionary and value perspective. We develop a robust model of the “thick” market, a realistic pure market regime including real people rather than economic maximizers, using the economic theory of anarchism. Our findings suggest that optionality is an important determinant of mar...

Ronald Coase was in his early 20’s when he developed his groundbreaking theory of the firm. This theory represented a new approach with no obvious precursors, but where did it arise from? This article traces the origins of Coase’s theory of the firm and provides a context for its formation. I argue that Coase’s arguments were rooted in the exchange...

The Austrian school of economics has recently made inroads into and appears may become an important perspective in the study of strategic management and entrepreneurship. Yet we see little of the prediction two decades ago that a specifically Austrian school of strategy would emerge (Jacobson, Academy of Management Review, 1992). This chapter summa...

We review the place of Austrian economics in contemporary entrepreneurship and management research, focusing on the contributions of Israel Kirzner. We show that Kirzner’s central concept of entrepreneurial discovery has been vastly influential in theoretical and applied work on entrepreneurship, even though Kirzner’s larger research program has no...

This article explains firm emergence and the role of firms in the market structure using the productive power of specialization. Based on productivity efficiencies through technologi- cal specialization, a model for firm emergence is drafted alongside Coasean transaction cost theory. I find that transaction costs cannot explain firm emergence but t...

Research in the modern theory of economic organization predominantly addresses issues relating to one or a combination of three fundamental questions originally posed or implied by Ronald Coase (1937): Why are there firms? What are the firm’s boundaries? And how is the firm’s organizational structure determined? (Foss 1997: 175; Foss and Klein 2008...

We propose a new perspective on the entrepreneurial firm, providing an account of entrepreneurial factor markets where — in contrast to received wisdom — the firm performs an important function as a precondition to and, in some sense, a creator of factor markets. Historically, scholars have conceptualized the firm as the platform from which the ent...

This paper drafts the space for the entrepreneurship function in the market process in terms of production. I elaborate on what is meant by the extent of the open market using compatibility/complementarity limitations of heterogeneous capital assets in production. Due to what I refer to as a conceptual ‘specialization deadlock’, markets emerge as d...

This paper investigates the predictive statements, made by Jacobson (1992), about the relevance and likely adoption by strategy scholars of concepts and framework from the so-called ‘Austrian’ (causal-realist) school of economics. I target the conscious and explicit use of ‘Austrian’ concepts and reasoning in the top five management journals over t...

This paper outlines a resource-based theory of the firm focusing on the physical reality of production, resources, and innovation. This approach differs from previous attempts to extend the resource-based view to explain the firm by identifying the drivers behind resource heterogenization, their role in and effect on the market process, and what th...

WHAT IS THE CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IN LAND, and how can such rights be justified ethically? This question is of immense philosophical importance, since property in land is a fundamental part of any society, land being the ground we walk and live on. Yet, there is no generally acceptable philosophical explanation as to how property in l...

The study of entrepreneurship and the study of economic organizing lack contact. In fact, the modern theory of the firm virtually ignores entrepreneurship, while the literature on entrepreneurship often sees little value in the economic theory of the firm. In contrast, we argue in this chapter that entrepreneurship theory and the theory of the firm...

This paper reviews Austrian approaches to the firm and drafts a theory that emphasizes the firm as a market phenomenon. Here the firm is a vehicle for imaginative entrepreneurs to create artificially high factor density, thereby increasing its internal “extent of the market” to support specialization of factors beyond the general level of division...

This paper discusses the theoretical and empirical body of research on entrepreneurship, and uses the long-lasting television series The Simpsons to illustrate the main points, approaches, and problems in the literature.

Contemporary and leading theories of the firm attempt to provide rationale for firm existence, but there is seemingly no focus on the dynamism of firm creation and evolution and, more specifically, firm emergence in the market place. These concepts are not only lacking in firm theorizing, they may be impossible due to the particular theoretical set...

Peter T. Leeson’s The Invisible Hook provides an illuminating economic analysis of how pirates established governance structures regulating their organization. Leeson is successful in showing economic rationales for piratical institutions and adopts the view of the piratical enterprise as a for-profit business firm to further illustrate the point....

Coase (1937) famously asked: if the price mechanism is efficient, why are there firms? His answer, following his identification of firms as “islands of conscious power,” was that using the price mechanism is costly and due to transaction costs it is efficient to integrate production processes under the direction of a manager. Attempts to formulate...

The theory of imputation, as analyzed and elaborated on by influential thinkers in the Austrian school of economics, tends to explain how prices of factors are "imputed" from prices of consumer goods and, more specifically, how consumers value products and services offered in the market. However, the theory of imputation explains this process in al...

Peter T. Leeson’s The Invisible Hook provides an illuminating economic analysis of how pirates established governance structures regulating their organization. Leeson is successful in showing economic rationales for piratical institutions and adopts the view of the piratical enterprise as a for-profit business firm to further illustrate the point....

This study seeks to investigate the nature of ownership of land and how the right to its control and use can be inferred from self-ownership as a premise. Hence, the question asked is how ownership (of land) can be justified considering the nature of man from a natural rights point of view. The starting point for the argument is self-ownership as b...

Democracy is said to uphold the dearest values and be the most moral system. But it cannot be characterized as a rigid "syste" but a continuously changing political framework, under which aims and values can be fulfilled - and replaced. The increasingly diverse and ever-changing environment of contemporary democracies forces change upon the systems...