Foundations and Trends® in Entrepreneurship > Vol 4 > Issue 1

Defining and Measuring Entrepreneurship

  • Iversen, Jens 1
  • Jørgensen, Rasmus 2
  • Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj 3

[1]Iversen, Jens, Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) and University of Aarhus, Denmark, jiv@cebr.dk [2]Jørgensen, Rasmus, Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) and University of Copenhagen, Denmark [3]Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj, Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) and University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Published: 27 September 2007 © 2008 J. Iversen, R. Jørgensen and N. Malchow-Møller

Short description

Defining and Measuring Entrepreneurship reviews the most common concepts of entrepreneurship from the theoretical economics literature, identifying common elements and pointing to important differences. The purpose is to compare these theoretical ideas of entrepreneurship with the measures used in empirical country-level studies.

Keywords

Business formation

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Table of contents

1 Introduction
2 Defining Entrepreneurship
3 Measuring Entrepreneurship
4 Comparison and Discussion
5 Conclusion
Appendix
Acknowledgments
References

Foundations and Trends® in Entrepreneurship

(Vol 4, Issue 1, 2008, pp 1-63)

DOI: 10.1561/0300000020

Abstract

Although entrepreneurship has become a buzzword in the public debate, a coherent definition of entrepreneurship has not yet emerged. In this paper, we review and compare the most common theoretical definitions of entrepreneurship in economics and discuss their connection to the various empirical measures in use. We argue that entrepreneurship is best considered a multifaceted concept, and that the different empirical measures reflect different aspects of entrepreneurship. The relevance of this exercise is illustrated by the fact that in a cross-country comparison of entrepreneurship, we find that the relative ranking of countries depends crucially on the indicator used.

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Table of contents

Introduction
Defining Entrepreneurship
Measuring Entrepreneurship
Comparisons and Discussion
Conclusions
References
Appendix
Cover image for Defining and Measuring Entrepreneurship

Defining and Measuring Entrepreneurship

72 pages

DOI: 10.1561/9781601980670

E-ISBN: 978-1-60198-067-0

ISBN: 978-1-60198-066-3

Description

Defining and Measuring Entrepreneurship reviews the most common concepts of entrepreneurship from the theoretical economics literature, identifying common elements and pointing to important differences. The purpose is to compare these theoretical ideas of entrepreneurship with the measures used in empirical country-level studies. Since a coherent or unifying definition of entrepreneurship has not emerged, the authors explain that it is important to be precise about the relationship between the different theoretical aspects of entrepreneurship and the empirical measures. This is revealed by comparing entrepreneurial activity across OECD countries using measures that reflect different theoretical aspects. Based on various data sources, the relative ranking of countries is very sensitive to the empirical measure used.