Entrepreneurial activity and economic development: The shape of the relationship

The paper investigates how entrepreneurial activity depends on economic development, measured by GDP per capita. The empirical analysis is based on GEM yearly data on 65 countries for the period from 2001 to 2011. We use nonparametric approach to show that variation in entrepreneurial activity across countries can be explained by U-shaped relationship, the hypothesis of L-shaped relationship is rejected. At the same time the analysis does not reveal any significant relationship between the variables in time within one particular country.