Competition Uncorked: Entrepreneurial Dynamics in the Deregulated Alberta Liquor Retailing Industry


Speaker


Abstract

We study private liquor retailing in Calgary, Alberta, following the deregulation of that industry. Prior to deregulation in 1993, all liquor stores were government owned and run. With deregulation, government stores were shut down and entrepreneurs were allowed to open private outlets. In the first ten years after deregulation, the number of liquor stores in Calgary went from 23 to 187. We map all private liquor stores from 1994 to 2003 on the street map of the city and analyzed store founding and failure patterns. Results suggest that the private-liquor-store organizational form was legitimated by the former government-run population, that entrepreneurs made location choices based on the spatial distribution of former government stores, but that locating in this way had no survival benefits. We also find no benefits to agglomeration and that there was a purely competitive effect of the new organizations, which is in contrast to the standard legitimation-competition effect found in most population studies. Our analysis builds understanding of entrepreneurial dynamics in a local retail market that has undergone a sudden regulatory change. 
 
The Erasmus - EIM - Panteia Entrepreneurship Lectures Series is co-organized by Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) and EIM Business & Policy Research (EIM/Panteia), an independent and international research and consultancy organisation, specialised in SMEs and Entrepreneurship. EIM is part of the Panteia group.
 
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Contact information:
Andreas RauchIngrid Verheul
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