Administrative burdens are known to be a major business constraint for incumbent SMEs in modern economies. Far less is known about the influence of these burdens on the startup of new firms. The current paper examines to what extent perceived administrative complexity related to starting a new...

This paper examines the relationship between business dynamics (entry and exit of firms) and employment growth at the country-industry level. We use a cross-country data set with harmonized data on numbers of entries and exits for a selection of fast-growing and innovative industries in six...

This paper deals with explaining the sizable differences in the rate of self-employment (business ownership) across 15 European countries in the period 1978-2000, within a framework of occupational choice, focusing on the influence of dissatisfaction and of per capita income. Using two different...

The study of predictors of entrepreneurial activity at the country level has been dominated by economic influences. However, the relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other forces such as institutional and/or cultural factors are at play....

This paper analyses the characteristics of firms that operate at the global productivity frontier and their relationship with other firms in the economy, focusing on the diffusion of global productivity gains and the policies that faciliate it. Firms at the global productivity frontier –...

Productivity is the ultimate driver of sustainable increases in living standards. While Ireland is a high productivity country, it has not been immune from the global productivity slowdown, with the pace of growth on a downward trend throughout the 2000s. Little research has been carried out as...

Trust and entrepreneurship are seen as key ingredients of long-term prosperity. However, it is not clear how these two are related. Part of the confusion can be traced back to the measurement of entrepreneurship, biased towards independent entrepreneurship (self-employed and new firms), and...

Institutional dynamics and uncertainty in a country are crucial considerations for investors when searching for venture capital opportunities. International entrepreneurship literature has focused on the impact of unidimensional measures of institutions, despite that institutional environments...

In this paper, we aim to bring the debate on the global productivity slowdown – which has largely been conducted from a macroeconomic perspective – to a more micro-level. We show that a particularly striking feature of the productivity slowdown is not so much a lower productivity growth at...

This research has two aims. The first one is to determine how and to what extent the national cultural characteristic of a country plays a role in her entrepreneurship success. The second one is to determine whether culture and economic development levels interact with each other on influencing...