Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a critical part of economic development and growth and important for the continued dynamism of the modern economy. The work program includes studies that document entry rates of firms across countries and industries; identify country, firm and owner characteristics related to greater entrepreneurship; and study the effect of entrepreneurship on industry performance.

New Business Formation
Entrepreneurial activity is a pillar of economic growth. For evidence of the economic power of entrepreneurship, we need look no further than the United States, where young firms have been shown to be a more important source of net job creation than incumbent firms. The Entrepreneurship Database is a critical source of data that facilitates the measurement of entrepreneurial activity across countries and over time. The data also allows for a deeper understanding of the relationship between new firm registration, the regulatory environment, and economic growth. This ongoing work produces Entrepreneurship Snapshots on various theme which continue to illustrate the importance of entrepreneurship for the dynamism of the modern economy. This project is joint effort by the Kauffman Foundation, World Bank Development Research Group, and the International Finance Corporation. More >>
Contact: Leora Klapper 

Micro-Enterprise Growth
This research includes randomized experiments designed to identify the constraints to small-scale microenterprise growth in a number of countries. A number of studies in Sri Lanka have looked at the long-term impacts of access to capital on microenterprise growth, and whether one can identify more entrepreneurial individuals from among the vast pool of the self-employed. Other projects look at the role of business training and whether entrepreneurship is something that can be taught, which involves a number of ongoing impact evaluations that examine the roles of labor assistance, business plans, and other interventions in identifying and growing entrepreneurial businesses. More >>
Contact: David McKenzie 

Related Links

• National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Entrepreneurship Working Group
• The OECD Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme
  

Policy Research Working Papers on Entrepreneurship

Documents
You can also download other related documents. These include content-rich current outputs (updated document versions, miscellaneous documents and web pages).