Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy in American Capitalism

Zoltan Acs and Ronnie Phillips

Small Business Economics, 2002, vol. 19, issue 3, 189-204

Abstract: American capitalism differs from all other forms of industrial capitalism is its historical focus on both the creation of wealth (entrepreneurship) and the reconstitution of wealth (philanthropy). Philanthropy is part of the implicit social contract that continuously nurtures and revitalizes economic prosperity. Much of the new wealth created historically has been given back to the community, to build up the great social institutions that have a positive feedback on future economic growth. This entrepreneurship-philanthropy nexus has not been fully explored by either economists or the general public. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that American philanthropists--especially those who have made their own fortunes--create foundations that, in turn, contribute to greater and more widespread economic prosperity through knowledge creation. If we do not analyze philanthropy we can understand neither how economic development occurred nor what accounts for American economic dominance. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0921-898X/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Chapter: Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy in American Capitalism (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:19:y:2002:i:3:p:189-204

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().