The birth of new enterprises

This paper deals with the birth of new enterprises both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. In the first part of the work, the conventional economic wisdom is compared with some alternative approaches leading to multicausal frameworks. The author tests their relative explanatory features in the second part of the paper. Elaborating the results of 720 questionnaires filled by new Italian entrepreneurs, the importance of economic variables as income expectations and barriers to entry in shaping the diffusion of new enterprises is confirmed. On the other hand, personal backgrounds and motivations as well as environment factors turn out to have a crucial role, too.