Improved governance and lower start-up costs may not be sufficient for encouraging the type of entrepreneurship that matters for economic growth. Using panel data on 60 countries spanning the period 2003-07 this paper establishes that (i) opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship (as opposed to...

We examine returns to entrepreneurship using a standard measure of welfare, the per capita consumption xpenditure. Using quantile regressions, we find welfare hierarchy in occupations. The results suggest that, across the welfare distribution, entrepreneurs who employ others have the high-test...

We examine how institutional and policy reforms affect the relationship between entrepreneurship and growth. We perform Arellano-Bond GMM estimations on annual data (over the period 1990-2002) from a large group of developing countries and focus in particular on the interplay between policy and...

The success of new start-up firms often depends on timing. It is valuable for the potential entrepreneur to wait for the right moment before starting a new firm. In this paper we provide a theoretical model to determine the optimal time for starting a new firm. We integrate insights from the...

Over the last few years we have observed a prominent flourishing of empirical studies on the determinants of new business creation and its effect on the economy. The present study focuses on an important determinant of entrepreneurship: the quality of institutions. This paper is an empirical...

We use data on 3,948 Chinese firms obtained from the World Bank.s Investment Climate Private Enterprise Survey to investigate early international entrepreneurship (international new ventures) in China. The extent of early international entrepreneurship in China is significant: 65 per cent of the...

We analyse potential dynamic benefits for a firm from having the option of adopting informal status. Informality may be a stepping stone, without which formality might never be achieved. This result obtains for a broad range of realistic parameter values, suggesting a potential dynamic case for...

Existing indicators of entrepreneurial activity (such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Entrepreneurship Barometer, FORA.s Entrepreneurship Index, OECD and Economic Commission.s sets of indicators, among others) and several variables that have been considered good proxies for...

This paper discusses the difficulties associated with measuring entrepreneurship in developing countries. Three important dichotomies in the research on entrepreneurship are discussed: formal-informal, legal-illegal, and necessity-opportunity. Several common measures of entrepreneurship are...

Entrepreneurship has emerged as an important element in the organization of economies. This emergence did not occur simultaneously in all developed countries. Differences in growth rates are often attributed to differences in the speed with which countries embrace entrepreneurial energy. This...