Economic and Planning Research

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The purpose of this article is to analyze and explain the relation between institutions and entrepreneurship, focusing on the entrepreneurship theorists’ viewpoints including Douglass North According to the institutional approach, the environment that shapes the economy, affects on entrepreneurial dynamics within each country. Such an environment is characterized by interdependencies between institutions and economic development. Entrepreneurs, reacting to deep-rooted incentives of institutional framework, are the major determinants of change. Organizations reflect the opportunities created by the institutions concerned. Institutional transformation is the result of the interaction between organizations and institutions. The costs of contracts binding and market information studies affect institutional characteristics. The institutional characteristics, in turn, determine entrepreneurial activities. The findings of this research indicate that the institutional theory of Douglass North has influenced the entrepreneurial theorists’ institutional explanations hence, the institutional approach to entrepreneurship has been recently extended to the entrepreneurship literature

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Economists you usually believe in distinction between economics and ethics. While ethical issues are embedded in economic phenomena, and they are a source of their explanations which have so far been neglected. This neglect is more evident in development economics than other branches of economics. This paper tries to indicate that “ethics” is a related matter in economic issues, especially in development economics. The analysis of three ethical areas, i.e. values, economic reforms and inequality - which play role in economic development - show that ethical problems are not easy to tackle in Development Economics. Development ethics was introduced to address the ethical problems in development economics though seemingly economists’ updated analytical tools do not suffice and they are required to interact with philosophers of “ethics”.

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The main purpose of this paper is to find an answer to the key question: “What kind of philosophical issues could be expected to be dealt with in economics?” Having reviewed the related literature, the researchers try to explain the philosophy of economics in the context of three domains, i.e. ontology, epistemology, and methodology of economics. The results suggest that ontological issues in economics cover the objectivity in economic phenomenon, causality, the tendency of economists to the universalization, and the origins of economic behavior. The epistemological issues are rationalism vs. empiricism, doubting the law or law-like statements in economics, and the aggregation (of issue micro- vs. macro-economic issues). Finally, from the methodological perspective, these issues could be discussed in the frameworks the value and fact distinction, mathematicization and quantification explanation methods in economics.

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Growth and development of knowledge-based economy is the desired objective for many economies and accomplishing this purpose requires the accurate and comprehensive understanding of the variables involved in this process. The knowledge generated by innovation and technological developments has driven long-term economic development in many countries and many governments have achieved considerable success through the development of Knowledge-based Economy. This paper estimates the impact of good governance indicators on knowledge-based economy development. In this regard, we select 33 countries and try to estimate the impact of components of good governance indicators (voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption) on the selected country's knowledge economy using multiple regression. The World Bank statistical databases has been used to collect data and Smart PLS software for estimation and analysis of data. Regression results suggest significant positive impact of good governance as a key variable on the knowledge economy index (KAM) in the selected countries. Furthermore, when we regress the effect of governance sub-indexes, estimated regressions suggest that the effect of the components of rule of law, political stability and control of corruption on the knowledge economy has been stronger compared to other components.