Entrepreneurship,economic development and institutions

This paper is an introduction to the special issue from the 3rd Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Research Conference held in Washington, D.C., in 2008. The paper has three objectives. First, to discuss the importance of the three stages of economic development, the factor-driven stage, the efficiency-driven stage and the innovation-driven stage. Second, to examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between stages of economic development and entrepreneurship. Third, to present a summary of the papers in the context of the theory.

National branding strategies and economic development: Implications for NIEs and LDCs

As the four newly industrialized economies (NIEs), Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, continue to improve their economic development, there is an increasing realization of the need to create world class brands for global competition. This is because these four NIEs, largely dependent on manufactured products for highly export-oriented strategies, are facing threats from lower cost semi-NIEs and LDCs (less developing countries) that are adopting similar strategies. This article examines the important roles played by brands in securing market share. In particular, it highlights the experiences of Japan in the development of international brands. Lessons are then drawn for the NIEs and LDCs, especially with regard to the need to consciously develop world class brands as part of the overall economic growth and development. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Entrepreneurship and structural economic transformation

This paper provides an endogenous growth model to illuminate the role of entrepreneurial start-up firms in structural economic transformation. We follow the Lewis-model distinction between a traditional and modern sector and underpin this distinction with micro-foundations. We specify mature and start-up entrepreneurs and make a distinction between survivalist self-employment activities in the traditional sector and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship in the modern. The model shows how opportunity-driven entrepreneurship can drive structural transformation in both the modern and traditional sectors through innovation and the provision of intermediate inputs and services (which permits greater specialization in manufacturing) and by increasing employment and productivity.     

Entrepreneurship,economic development,and institutional environment: evidence from OECD countries

The purpose of this article is to establish a typology of entrepreneurship for OECD countries over the 1999–2012 period. Our aim is to draw a distinction between managerial and entrepreneurial economies, to identify groups of countries with similar economic and entrepreneurial activity variables, and to determine the economic and institutional drivers of entrepreneurial activities in each group. We show that the level of development, sectoral specialization, and institutional variables related to entrepreneurship, functioning of the labor market, and openness of the country are decisive to understand differences in entrepreneurship activity across countries. Results show that the pre-crisis period, from 1999 to 2008, is a period of growth favorable to entrepreneurship. The financial crisis involved a break in entrepreneurial dynamism, with agricultural economies withstanding the financial crisis better. The 2010–2012 period of recovery is a period of a sharp slowdown in entrepreneurial activity, during which the countries that are less dependent on the financial sector proved to be the most resilient in terms of entrepreneurial activity. Nevertheless, it is the advanced knowledge economies with developed financial markets, fewer institutional regulatory constraints, and greater scope for qualitative entrepreneurship that show lower unemployment rates. These findings have important implications for the implementation of public policy in order to promote entrepreneurial activity and reduce unemployment.     

Entrepreneurship,export orientation,and economic growth

In this paper the relationship between a country’s prevalence of new ventures and its rate of economic growth is investigated, while taking into account new ventures’ export orientation. It is generally acknowledged that new venture creation as well as export activity may both be important strategies for achieving national economic growth. However, to our knowledge no attempt has been made to investigate empirically the role of export-driven new ventures in economic growth. We focus on the national level and use data for a sample of 34 countries over the period 2002–2008. Our results suggest that, on top of a positive relation between entrepreneurial activity in general and subsequent macroeconomic growth, there is an additional positive effect of export-oriented early-stage entrepreneurship in higher-income countries. However, there is no such additional effect in lower-income countries.     

The economic system and economic development

An increasing number of voices have recently been claiming that an economic system based more strongly on the market should be introduced in Third World countries for reasons of efficiency. What conditions need to be met in the developing countries for this to be possible? What specific measures should be taken?     

Entrepreneurship capital and its impact on knowledge diffusion and economic performance

In this paper, we develop two hypotheses: First, regional innovation efforts have a positive impact on regional knowledge based entrepreneurial activity. Second, knowledge based entrepreneurship positively affects regional economic performance. We test these hypotheses using county level data from West Germany, employing a structural equation model to analyze the relationships between latent variables. Our empirical analysis provides evidence supporting both hypotheses. In particular, our results suggest that innovation efforts have an indirect effect on economic performance via entrepreneurship. This indirect effect is neglected in existing empirical studies focusing on the direct effect of innovation on economic performance.     

Regional economic integration and multinational firm strategies

This paper analyzes the effects of regional economic integrations on investment patterns among multinational firms. We develop a model in which heterogeneous firms decide on the optimal foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies for serving trade-integrated regions consisting of asymmetric countries: developed and developing nations. Following reduced trade costs within the trade-integrated region, our model shows that integrating into a regional economic zone affects firms with relatively low productivity levels to enter developing nation within the region via complex FDI – a firm activity of engaging in multiple types of FDI. Specifically, we show that depending on the size of the region respective to the home country, complex FDI involves different investment patterns. Using Korean firm- and plant-level data, we specify a binary choice model to link firms’ choice of FDI strategies with their productivity levels and trade-integrated regions. Our empirical results are consistent with the theoretical implications.     

Globalization and economic development

A feature of the continuing integration of the world economy is the globalization of production and the consequent rise of trade in parts and components. Products are more internationalized and less identified with any particular country. Non-trivial shares of the value-added of many exports consist of imports and vice versa. Extension of the international division of labour beyond finished products offers developing countries a broader range of choices for industrialization. This paper explores the implications of these developments in the context of a standard trade model. Component specialization in a developing country's import sector is shown to be superior in overall welfare terms to specialization in the integrated product. Output and employment are higher in the sector, but the wage-rental ratio is lower.     

浅谈和谐社会与经济发展

构建和谐社会是经济发展的前提条件,而经济发展是构建和谐社会的基础和保证,二者是具有内在联系的统一整体.本文论证了和谐社会与经济发展的辩证关系.     

German exports and economic development

The influence of the export trade on the economic development since 1974 shows how greatly economic activities in the Federal Republic of Germany depend upon the situation abroad. In this context the author analyses the regional distribution and the goods structure of German exports and discusses their medium-term prospects.     

Long-term vision and economic development

This paper examines the effect on economic development of whether a country's policymakers adopt a long-term vision. We use a novel institutional variable that indicates whether policymakers have a long-term strategic vision. However, the difficulty in estimating a causal effect is that long-term vision is endogenous to economic development. Therefore, we use the future-time reference language variables introduced in American Economic Review, 103, 690; 2013 as instrumental variables for long-term vision. To account for endogeneity, the paper conducts two-stage least-squares estimations where the language instruments are used in the first stage to find an exogenous source of variation in long-term vision. The results show that long-term vision, instrumented by future-time reference, explains cross-country variations in economic development. These results are robust even after the inclusion of control variables and after the exclusion of outliers.     

浅谈和谐社会与经济发展

构建和谐社会是经济发展的前提条件,而经济发展是构建和谐社会的基础和保证,二者是具有内在联系的统一整体.本文论证了和谐社会与经济发展的辩证关系.     

Entrepreneurship,institutional economics,and economic growth: an ecosystem perspective

We analyze conceptually and in an empirical counterpart the relationship between economic growth, factor inputs, institutions, and entrepreneurship. In particular, we investigate whether entrepreneurship and institutions, in combination in an ecosystem, can be viewed as a “missing link” in an aggregate production function analysis of cross-country differences in economic growth. To do this, we build on the concept of National Systems of Entrepreneurship (NSE) as resource allocation systems that combine institutions and human agency into an interdependent system of complementarities. We explore the empirical relevance of these ideas using data from a representative global survey and institutional sources for 46 countries over the period 2002–2011. We find support for the role of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in economic growth.