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This paper applies the logic of economic calculation to the actions of autocrats. We model autocrats as stationary bandits who use profit-and-loss calculations to select institutions that maximize their extraction rents. We find in many cases autocrats achieve rent maximization through creating and protecting private property rights. This in turn yields high levels of production, with expropriation kept low enough to incentivize continued high production. Importantly, while this leads to increasing quantities of available goods and services over time, it does not lead to true development; that is, the coordination of consumer demand with producer supply through directing resources to their highest-valued uses. We apply our model to the authoritarian governments of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, showing how they function as quasi-corporate governance organizations in the business of maximizing appropriable rents.

We argue that the future of Austrian political economy rests on the study of how institutional entrepreneurs discover and implement alternative institutional arrangements conducive to economic growth. This requires a dual level of analysis in spontaneous order studies. How such institutional arrangements manifest themselves is ultimately an empirical question. As a progressive research program, Austrian political economy will entail cross-fertilization with other empirical branches of political economy that illustrate its own central theoretical contributions to political economy, namely economic calculation, entrepreneurship, and spontaneous order. Accordingly, we argue that such cross-fertilization with the work of Ronald Coase and Elinor Ostrom will further expound the institutional counterpart of “rivalry” in the market process, namely polycentricism and its empirical manifestation. Understanding the distinct relationship between rivalry and polycentricism will provide the central theoretical underpinning of institutional evolution.

For the most part, the book presents a comparative assessment of Austrian economic theories with the predominant neo-classical economic theories. One fundamental theme is that Austrian economic theories are significantly better than that of neo-classical economics and the author provides a variety of reasons to support that conclusion. The author starts with a direct comparison of these two schools in chapter 1. The comparison of the neo-classical economic principles and methodology with Austrian thinking is done in a commendable manner and the summary table in chapter 1 is excellent.

Rasmusen, Ramseyer and Wiley (1991) (hereafter RRW) seek to show that exclusionary agreements can be both “profitable and pernicious (1137).” A contract to exclude provides that if I sell to you, you agree not to buy from anyone else but me; you must be loyal or, better yet, faithful, to me. RRW “focus on exclusionary conduct that is ‘naked’: conduct unabashedly meant to exclude rivals, for which no one offers any efficiency justification” (1137).

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that invention can be taught to business students who do not have the prior technical knowledge that is assumed to be a requirement for this kind of activity.

This paper contains reflections on the results of introducing a specific course in inventing based on the insights of leading figures in the economics heterodoxy, who reject key tenets of the standard‐economics approach that treats invention as exogenous.

The result of this experiment suggests that teaching invention to business students is possible based on such foundations, as measured by the number of patent application made and granted.

Since there is no widely accepted theory to explain invention, there is no control for this experiment. This theoretical limitation should not detract, however, from the evidence presented here that there is something of practical use in the heterodox tradition that is being overlooked in enterprise and business education.

This paper provides one model for teaching an important aspect of enterprising behaviour and also has practical outcomes in terms of the invented items themselves. In addition, it serves to demystify an aspect of business activity that is often left unexplored in business studies curricula.

The paper is innovative at a conceptual and a practical level in providing both a foundation for the study of invention based on economic theory, and advice on how this can be taught to achieve practical and independently validated outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to help growth‐oriented timber haulage entrepreneurs to recognise the problems of growth and understand its implications.

Data from 30 companies were retrieved from their financial statements between 2001 and 2006. The relevant literature consists of the company growth theory, strategy analysis and definitions of entrepreneurship. In this empirical study a resource‐based approach was used as the theoretical background. The research method was purely financial analysis.

Economies of scale exist in the sector but are limited and do not evolve hand‐in‐hand with company size. There is an optimum size for a timber haulage company at which it can operate efficiently. However, the sector may be polarised.

The data used in the study do not clarify the particular entrepreneurial actions taken in companies as they grew.

This empirical study covers new ground and offers new information about the sector. The results can be used to assist in the development of the sector, which has been studied very little. In addition, the results can be used as a background for further studies, and also by growth‐oriented companies' management when considering the option of growth.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of entrepreneurship that can help researchers, policymakers and practitioners develop entrepreneurial responses to the current economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis.

The paper adopts a conceptual approach. Hudson’s diagnosis of the current patterns of production is applied to the two dominant streams of theorising on entrepreneurship: the opportunistic discovery view and the resourcefulness view of, for example, effectuation.

The analysis indicates that the opportunistic discovery view and, to some extent, the resourcefulness view are both inadequate as conceptual platforms for entrepreneurial responses to the economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Instead, an alternative perspective on entrepreneurship is developed: Entrepreneurship as re-sourcing. The perspective emphasises the importance of building regional-level resilience through entrepreneurial activity that sources resources from new places and uses these resources to create multiple forms of value.

The paper draws attention to dysfunctions in the current theorising on entrepreneurship in light of the economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Instead, the authors offer an alternative. In doing so, the paper also points to the difficult trade-offs that exist between, for example, long-term resilience and short-term competitiveness and growth on a regional, as well as firm level.

This paper adds to research by offering an alternative view of entrepreneurship grounded – not in economics – but in economic geography, thus highlighting the importance of productions’ grounding in material reality and the importance of addressing non-economic concerns in our way of thinking about entrepreneurship.