Essays on Economics of Entrepreneurship

This dissertation examines three important issues. The first issue is about the human capital investment and entrepreneurship as a career choice. The standard human capital theory shows that firms (employees) never invest in general (firm-specific) human capital of the employee as they do not extract any return from it. However, when entrepreneurship is introduced as a career option for an innovative employee, both firm’s and employee’s human capital investments change. Employee starts investing in his firm-specific human capital to increase the probability to innovate (and to become an entrepreneur). However, the firm uses general human capital investment to reduce the risk of employee’s departure. The second issue is regarding the factors motivating entry regulations reforms and the possible nonlinear effects of entry regulation reforms. The current literature and the policy recommendations assume that these reforms have linear effects on entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the anecdotal evidence shows that the outcomes of such reforms vary greatly from country to country. To investigate this issue, I collect a sample data on entry regulations and firm creation from World Bank. The empirical analysis indicates that the effect of entry regulation reforms depends on the pre-reform level of bureaucracy in the country. More specifically, while low-bureaucracy countries benefit from entry regulation reforms, high-bureaucracy countries do not benefit. Moreover, the probability of making a reform increases if the country has reformist neighbors, cumbersome entry regulations, high unemployment rate, or low corruption level. The last issue is related to the individual and joint effects of bureaucracy and corruption on different types of entrepreneurs. The current literature investigates these effects only on unified measures of entrepreneurship. However, entrepreneurs are very different in many senses. To address this issue, I collect the necessity-based and opportunity-based entrepreneurship data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The empirical analysis yield two important results: First, bureaucracy has a direct negative (positive) effect on necessity-based (opportunity-based) entrepreneurs. Second, corruption mitigates the effect of bureaucracy for both groups of entrepreneurs. All three chapters offer useful insights and important implications to academics and policymakers.

THE EPIDEMIOLOGY AND HEALTH ECONOMICS OF ANKLE INJURIES

The thesis focuses on a central theme of the epidemiology and health economics of ankle sprains to inform health policy and the provision of health services. It describes the burden, prognosis, resource utilization, and costs attributed to these injuries. The first manuscript systematically reviewed 34 studies on the direct and indirect costs of treating ankle and foot injuries. The overall costs per patient ranged from $2,075- $3,799 (2014 USD) for ankle sprains; $290-$20,132 for ankle fractures; and $6,345-$45,731 for foot fractures, reflecting differences in injury severity, treatment methods, and study characteristics. The second manuscript provided an epidemiological and economic profile of non-fracture ankle and foot injuries in Ontario using linked databases from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. The incidence rate of ankle sprains was 16.9/1,000 person-years. Annually, ankle and foot injuries cost $21,685,876 (2015 CAD). The mean expenses per case were $99.98 (95% CI, $99.70-100.26) for any injury. Costs ranged from $133.78-$210.75 for ankle sprains and $1,497.12-$1,755.69 for dislocations. The third manuscript explored the impact of body mass index on recovery from medically attended grade 1 and 2 ankle sprains using the Foot and Ankle Outcome Score. Data came from a randomized controlled trial of a physiotherapy intervention in Kingston, Ontario. At six months, the odds ratio of recovery for participants with obesity was 0.60 (0.37-0.97) before adjustment and 0.74 (0.43-1.29) after adjustment compared to non-overweight participants. The fourth manuscript used trial data to examine the health-related quality of life among ankle sprain patients using the Health Utilities Index version 3 (HUI-3). The greatest improvements in scores were seen at one month post-injury (HUI-3: 0.88, 95% CI: 0.86-0.90). Individuals with grade 2 sprains had significantly lower ambulation scores than those with grade 1 sprains (0.70 vs. 0.84; p<0.05). The final manuscript used trial data to describe the financial burden (direct and indirect costs) of ankle sprains. The overall mean costs were $1,508 (SD: $1,452) at one month and increased to $2,206 (SD: $3,419) at six months. Individuals with more severe injuries at baseline had significantly higher (p<0.001) costs compared to individuals with less severe injuries, after controlling for confounders.