A Note on Entrepreneurship, Small Business and Economic Growth

Abstract

The aim of the present short paper is to show that since the 1970s the world has changed considerably, and that this change has had consequences for the current policy debate on the determinants of economic growth. Our paper deals with some aspects of the recent scientific literature on the relation between entrepreneurship and small business, on the one hand, and economic growth, on the other. In particular, it gives a summary of some work of the EIM/CASBEC research group in the Netherlands. It refers to scientific analyses showing that countries that are lagging behind in the process of restructuring will pay a penalty in terms of forgone growth. It also pays attention to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a new and large multinational project focusing on the collection and analysis of internationally comparable data on the rate of entrepreneurial activity.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, small firms, market structure, growth, economic development

JEL Classification: M, L20, L11, M13, O10