We combine two empirical observations in a general equilibrium occupational choice model. The first is that entrepreneurs have more control than employees over the employment of and accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is that entrepreneurs enjoy higher returns to...

What explains the world-wide trend of pro-entrepreneurial policies in the last few decades? We study entrepreneurial policy in a lobbying model taking into account the conflict of interest between entrepreneurs and incumbents. It is shown that international market integration leads to more...

Recent research has highlighted the role of institutions in channeling entrepreneurs into activities with positive or negative effects on overall productivity. Embedding central elements from these theories into a political economy framework reveals the bilateral causal relation between...

Political economy has been at the core of entrepreneurship research since its conception. Although the entrepreneur is frequently regarded as the key figure in the capitalist system, academic research in economics has for a long time overlooked the entrepreneur in its analyses of growth. In...

This paper reconsiders the predominant typology pioneered by Baumol (1990) between productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship. Baumol's classificatory scheme is built around a limited concept of first-best outcomes and therefore easily fails to appreciate the true impact of...

Israel M. Kirzner is the 2006 winner of The International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. In this essay, we present and evaluate his main contributions to the economics of entrepreneurship. The focus is on how Kirzner defines the entrepreneurial function. In order to...

In this introductory chapter to a collective volume dealing with the political economy of entrepreneurship, we argue, based on a suggested unifying framework, that political economy is a fruitful approach to entrepreneurship. The importance of institutions in structuring such an analysis is also...