Victor V. Claar, Ph.D.

Fulbright Scholar

Claar spent a year teaching economics to graduate students in Armenia.

West Virginia University

Ph.D.

Economics

2000

West Virginia University

M.A.

Economics

1995

Houghton College

B.A.

Business Administration

1987

Fair trade coffee...how fair is your cup of joe?

Florida Southern College's Politics, Law, and Economics Lecture Series  Lakeland, Florida

2018-08-28

Automation and the Future of Work and Welfare

IMAGINE Conference  Adam Smith Center, Singapore

2018-07-10

Beauty and Wonder Are All Around Us

Jubilee Professional  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2018-02-23

Creativity, innovation, and the historicity of entrepreneurship

Jordan Ballor, Victor V Claar

2019-08-30

Purpose Creativity and innovation are interrelated, and indeed often conflated, concepts. A corollary to this distinction is two different perspectives or types of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the distinction between creativity and innovation on the basis of their relationship to history and implications for understandings of entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a theoretical exploration of entrepreneurship understood in relation to a proper distinction between creativity and innovation. Creativity and innovation differ from the perspective of their relationship to what has already happened in history vs the radical novelty of a particular discovery or invention. Findings Creativity can be understood as what human beings do in connection with the fundamental givenness of things. Innovation, on the other hand, can be best understood as a phenomenon related to the historical progress of humankind. Innovation is what human beings discover on the basis of what has already been discovered. Entrepreneurs can be seen as those who discover something radically new and hidden in the latent possibilities of reality and creation. Or entrepreneurs can be seen as those who develop new, and even epochal, discoveries primarily on the basis of the insights and discoveries of those who have come before them in history. Originality/value This paper provides a helpful conceptual distinction between creativity and innovation, and finds compatibility in these different perspectives. A holistic and comprehensive understanding of entrepreneurship embraces both its creative and innovative aspects, its metaphysical grounding as well as its historicity.

View more

Correspondence: Fair trade coffee

Victor V Claar, Colleen E Haight

2015

Fair trade coffee is a cup half full, according to Raluca Dragusanu, Daniele Giovannucci, and Nathan Nunn in “The Economics of Fair Trade." We are not persuaded.

View more

Hope for the East: Entrepreneurial attitudes of MBA students in two transition economies relative to those in the USA

Victor V Claar, Robert Frey, Marek Szarucki, Vicki R TenHaken

2012

This paper examines whether a proactive personality instrument, designed to assess whether an individual possesses personality traits often linked to entrepreneurship, is robust to international applications. We present the instrument to three cohorts of MBA students: a group in Michigan, another in Armenia, and a third in Poland. While internationally different, the student cohorts are similar otherwise. We find no meaningful differences on students’ overall average scores; all groups appear equally suited to entrepreneurship. Therefore we find the instrument to be internationally robust. We also examine whether the form of each group’s proactive personality varies internationally. We find evidence that cultural (whether social or economic) differences lead to different kinds of high scores – i.e., an international treatment effect. An important implication is that different kinds of ‘entrepreneurial’ students might want to consider working alongside others with proactive personalities, especially if a potential partner would bring a complementary set of attributes.

View more