Entrepreneurship, Social Capital, and Institutions: Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship across Nations

Latent Entrepreneurship Across Nations

The paper studies latent entrepreneurship across nations. There are three main findings. First, large numbers of people in the industrial countries say they would prefer to be self-employed. Top of the international ranking of entrepreneurial spirit come Poland (with 80% saying so), Portugal and the USA; bottom of the table come Norway (with 27% saying so), Denmark and Russia. Second, for indiv...

Defining the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Entrepreneurship’: Altruism and Entrepreneurship

What is social entrepreneurship? In, particular, what’s so social about it? Understanding what social entrepreneurship is enables researchers to study the phenomenon and policy-makers to design measures to encourage it. However, such an understanding is lacking partly because there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as yet. In this paper, we suggest a definition of social...

Boundaries of Social Capital in Entrepreneurship

Our research begins with a theoretical critique of the social capital literature, and then focuses on Old Harbor, Alaska. In this remote outpost, mainly populated by Alutiiq people, all entrepreneurs self-identified as Euro-Americans or multi-ethnic, not Alutiiq. Although Alutiiq people have abundant social capital, which they employed for economic purposes, they did not employ their social cap...

Social Networks and Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship and Institutions Magnus Henrekson Entrepreneurship and Institutions

In this paper entrepreneurs are defined as agents who bring about economic change by combining their own effort with other factors of production in search of economic rents. The institutional setup is argued to determine both the supply and direction of entrepreneurial activity. Four key institutions are explored more closely: property rights protection, savings policies, taxation and the regul...