Schumpeterian Entrepreneurship in Europe Compared to Other Industrialized Regions

Magnus Henrekson () and Tino Sanandaji

No 1170, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: Cross-country comparisons of entrepreneurship are difficult due to the lack of standard empirical definitions of entrepreneurship. Measures focusing on small business activity and self-employment suggest that Europe has the same or higher rates of entrepreneurship than the U.S. and East Asia. However, most business activity is not entrepreneurial in the Schumpeterian sense. We rely on empirical measures that more closely tally Schumpeterian entrepreneurship: self-made dollar billionaires per capita who earned their wealth by creating firms, top global firms founded in recent decades, unicorn startups, and VC investment as a share of GDP. Western Europe is shown to underperform in all four measures of high-impact Schumpeterian entrepreneurship relative to the U.S. Once we account for Europe’s strong performance in technological innovation, an “entrepreneurship deficit” relative to East Asia also becomes apparent. This underperformance is missed by most standard measures. Finally, we also find that China performs surprisingly well in Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, especially compared to Eastern Europe.

Keywords: Billionaire entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Institutions; Regulation; Self-employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L50 M13 O31 P14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2017-05-16, Revised 2018-06-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1170

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