textWe draw on the knowledge spillover literature to suggest that a country's proportion of export-oriented new ventures represents an outcome of knowledge spillovers that stem from foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade (export spillovers) as well as a source of knowledge spillovers (entrepreneurship spillovers). To test the hypotheses, we use macrolevel data from 34 countries during the period 2002-2005. We find that the relationship between FDI and international trade on the one hand and a country's proportion of export-oriented new ventures on the other differs for higher- and lower-income countries. In addition, a country's proportion of export-oriented new ventures affects the subsequent emergence of new businesses.

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Knowledge spillovers and new ventures' export orientation

This article analyzes the content and evolution of research based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project. We conducted a rigorous search of articles published in journals within the Thomson Reuters’ Social Sciences Citation Index® through an exploratory analysis focused on articles using GEM data. The main findings of this study reveal that the institutional approach is the most commonly used conceptual framework. Also, although there are still few academic publications using GEM data, the number of articles is increasing, as are opportunities for future research.

Gem Research: Achievements and Challenges

Entrepreneurs have often been considered as either belonging to the necessity or to the opportunity category based on their motivations when they started their organization. However, the necessity/opportunity entrepreneurship dichotomy is too limiting and the boundary between opportunity and necessity is certainly not as clear-cut as it is assumed. Moreover, the interpretation of the entrepreneurial motivation must be considered as a product of the interaction between a specific situation and a specific individual. Depending on the individual’s characteristics, the same motivation could be interpreted either as a necessity motivation or as an opportunity motivation. In this paper, based on an original dataset of 538 Belgian nascent entrepreneurs, we thus explore the impact of entrepreneurs’ background and socio-economic characteristics on the way they position themselves on the necessity–opportunity axis. We point out that individuals who become involved in an entrepreneurial process have encountered a situation of necessity and/or opportunity and that the latter can take various forms. We show the impact of the socio-economic characteristics of entrepreneurs on the alignment of their project with a necessity or opportunity entrepreneurial dynamic. The existence of sub-profiles of entrepreneurs within the necessity–opportunity typology is also highlighted. We stress, for instance, that not all jobseekers are necessity entrepreneurs and that new venture creation based on family influence may convey both a necessity and an opportunity dimension. Finally, our study reveals a new kind of entrepreneurship, i.e., hobby entrepreneurship.

Opportunity and/or Necessity Entrepreneurship? The Impact of the Socio-Economic Characteristics of Entrepreneurs

While entrepreneurship researchers agree that institutions ‘matter’ for entrepreneurship, they also have a rather encompassing understanding of institutions as almost any external factor that influences entrepreneurship. Ultimately, this literature thus comes up with a long list of institutional factors that may explain entrepreneurial differences between countries. But which institutions are most influential? How do these institutions relate to different types of entrepreneurship? And to what extent are institutions complementary to each other in the way they sustain different entrepreneurship types? The literature on ‘Varieties-of-Capitalism’ (VoC) offers a parsimonious theoretical framework to address these questions. Based on the VoC literature, we theoretically derive a consistent set of institutional indicators that can explain differences in entrepreneurship types between countries. Based on principal component and cluster analyses, we illustrate how 21 Western developed economies cluster around four distinct institutional settings. Furthermore, we use simple OLS regressions to show how these institutional constellations are related to different types of entrepreneurship. We conclude that four different ‘Varieties of Entrepreneurship’ can be identified across the Western world. The main implication of our findings is that a ‘perfect’ institutional constellation, equally facilitating different types of entrepreneurship, does not exist. Policy-makers seeking to stimulate entrepreneurship are thus faced with the trade-off of targeting policy reforms to that entrepreneurship type they intend to promote – at the expense of other types of entrepreneurship and the broader societal consequences such reforms will have.

Varieties of Entrepreneurship: Exploring the Institutional Foundations of Different Entrepreneurship Types through ‘Varieties-of-Capitalism’ Arguments

It has been shown that corruption has a negative effect on firm productivity, but what about its impact on product innovation ? We find that corruption, functioning as a bribe tax, diminishes the probability of new product introduction. We use a World Bank Enterprise Survey from India in 2005, with 1600 firms answering if they introduced a new product to the firm and on the average quantity of bribe paid by firms. Controlling for innovation determinants, firm characteristics, location choice, multi-product firms and other business environment variables, sector-location bribe averages have a negative and significant impact on product innovation.

New Products and Corruption: Evidence from Indian Firms

textThis paper is an introduction to the special issue from the 3rd Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Research Conference held in Washington, D.C., in 2008. The paper has three objectives. First, to discuss the importance of the three stages of economic development, the factor-driven stage, the efficiency-driven stage and the innovation-driven stage. Second, to examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between stages of economic development and entrepreneurship. Third, to present a summary of the papers in the context of the theory.

Zoltan Acz

Papers

Entrepreneurship, economic development and institutions