Identification of the entrepreneur's economic function has engaged economists for more than 200 years. In this paper we address the issue of entrepreneurship in two distinct ways: a) as it has historically developed within the field of economics and b) as it develops in the transitional context....

We analyse the decision to become an entrepreneur by either taking over an established business or starting a new venture from scratch. A model is developed which predicts how several individual- and firm-specific characteristics influence entrepreneurs' entry mode. The new venture creation mode...

Total factor productivity of twenty OECD countries for a recent period (1971-2002) is explained using six different models based on the established literature. Traditionally, entrepreneurship is not dealt with in these models. In the present paper it is shown that – when this variable is added...

n 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...

This meta-analytical review of empirical studies of the impact of schooling on entrepreneurship selection and performance in developing economies looks at variations in impact across specific characteristics of the studies. A marginal year of schooling in developing economies raises enterprise...

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not having taken this possible linkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts both of risk aversion and balanced skills...

How valuable is education for entrepreneurs’ performance as compared to employees’? What might explain any differences? And does education affect peoples’ occupational choices accordingly? We answer these questions based on a large panel of US labor force participants. We show that...

We investigate which countries have the highest potential to achieve entrepreneurial progress. This progress is defined using an entrepreneurial ladder with five successive steps: “never thought about starting a business”, “thinking about starting a business”, “taking steps to start a...

Existing studies show a positive relationship between entrepreneurs' business performance and their conventional human capital as measured by previous business experience and formal education. In this paper, we explore whether illegal entrepreneurship experience (IEE), an unconventional form of...

We test a new model where the entrepreneurial decision is described as a process of successive engagement levels, i.e., as an entrepreneurial ladder. Five levels are distinguished using nearly 12,000 observations from the 2004 “Flash Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship” covering the 25...