Healing Wounds : Institutional Strength, Peacebuilding, and Productive Entrepreneurship – Exploratory Analysis on 23 Departments of Colombia

This study presents an exploratory analysis on the correlation among institutional strength, peacefulness, and entrepreneurship on a sample of 23 departments in Colombia using data of 2014. To achieve this purpose, three indexes were proposed and constructed based on seminal-conceptual definitions or international assessment standards, namely: 1) Institutional Strength Index, 2) Building Peace Index (based on Negative Peace Index and Positive Peace Index), and 3) Productive Entrepreneurship Index. The results do not show a significant correlation among all three indexes. On the one hand, there is a significant correlation (p<0.05) between the Institutional Strength Index and the Productive Entrepreneurship Index. On the other hand, there are non-significant negative correlations between Positive Peace Index and Institutional Strength Index, Productive Entrepreneurship Index and Positive Peace Index, and Productive Entrepreneurship Index and Building Peace Index. In a second look, department’s population was the measure with the higher number of significant correlations (p<0.01) among variables related to productive entrepreneurship, employment, Gross Domestic Product, industrial sophistication, innovation (patents), and crime. Finally, conclusions and future research are discussed