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This chapter examines the relationship between entrepreneurship and a particular kind of education process termed credentialism. An entrepreneurial spirit is essential to the dynamism of a commercial society like Hong Kong. It has facilitated the circulation of people, goods, and ideas and is a quality most Hong Kongers have taken pride in. However, this force seems to have declined since the 1980s. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) reports that the territory's total entrepreneurial activity index scores low. In light of new opportunities on the mainland, one has to ask if this generation of Hong Kongers has been prepared well enough to explore them. Professionals in the creative industries have crossed the border to seek strategic alliances with mainland counterparts.

Overconfidence is one of the most pervasive biases in human behavior and has been offered as an explanation for the high failure rates of start‐ups. Recent works, however, have shown that excess entry is possible even when individuals' are rational and exhibit confidence levels below average. Using a large balanced panel of GEM data aggregated by country for seventeen countries from 2001 to 2006 the study of this chapter finds overconfidence to have only very limited explanatory power and demonstrate the difficulty of capturing overconfidence unambiguously. The chapter also argues that, if at all present, overconfidence may be a desirable factor in some settings, both for individuals and at the aggregate level.

This chapter examines female early-stage entrepreneurial activity across thirty-nine countries, using data on two time periods, 2003 to 2005 and 2006 to 2008. The chapter confirms the existence of a gender gap in entrepreneurship at the global level. Further, the chapter finds evidence that the observed U-shaped relationship between economic growth and entrepreneurial activity holds even when only women are considered although with prevalence rates that are significantly lower than those of men for all countries in our sample. Finally, the chapter finds some preliminary evidence that institutional support specifically aimed at fostering gender parity is important in determining both the proportion and rate of women’s entrepreneurship.

This chapter focuses on the importance of the family context from which entrepreneurial behaviors emerge. The importance, role and definitions relative to families and entrepreneurship are explored and critiqued. Then, using data from twenty-eight countries participating in the GEM project in 2008, the chapter analyzes the stratify entrepreneurs in the sample into family entrepreneurs and non-family entrepreneurs and investigate differences in levels and characteristics between family and non-family entrepreneurship. Structural and systematic differences emerge. The exploratory study reveals that the family plays a very significant role in entrepreneurial activities, and that the family dimension of entrepreneurial behavior is a universal phenomenon with worldwide implications.

Agency and altruism theory are combined to develop a framework explaining expected returns on informal investments in fifty-four countries that participated in GEM in either 2007 or 2008 or both. The chapter finds evidence that altruism affects expected returns. Also, the chapter finds that as the relationship between investor and entrepreneur becomes more distant, the influence of altruism decreases and agency concerns increase to the point where they dominate, as in the case of formal investments by professional venture capitalists. The chapter also finds evidence that gender and age influence expected returns on informal investments and that entrepreneurs expected higher returns from their own businesses than from their investments in the businesses of others.

This chapter compares the entrepreneurial attitudes, activity and aspiration of a representative sample of over 38,000 individuals in the United Kingdom. White life-long residents are found to have less awareness of and less favourable attitudes towards entrepreneurship than other ethnic/migrant categories. Those with black ethnic backgrounds appear to exhibit higher entrepreneurial propensity, but this does not translate into significantly higher levels of actual business ownership. Both UK-born regional in-migrants and immigrants are more likely to be high-expectation early-stage entrepreneurs than life-long residents. However, belonging to any of fifteen different ethnic minorities rather than white British appears to have no effect on the propensity to be a high-expectation early-stage entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs are of key importance in translating creativity into economic output. Consequently the urban dimension of entrepreneurship is a subject of great interest. This chapter sets out a framework encompassing the process between entrepreneurial perceptions and entrepreneurial activity at the individual level and demonstrate how an urban environment can have an impact on this process. The chapter creates entrepreneurship indices for thirty-five world cities exploiting the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Database 2001-2006. We investigate differences between city-level and country-level for a selection of these indices and show that, indeed, most of them are higher for world cities than for the rest of their respective countries. Albeit very preliminary, the results provide an initial exploration of the entrepreneurial advantage of world cities.

Entrepreneurship is the target of various policy instruments at different geographical levels. In fact, the aim of several EU regional policies is to support those regions that lag behind the EU average in terms of per capita GDP and rates of unemployment. Based on empirical data at the NUTS2 level, this chapter analyzes whether previous EU support has had an impact on entrepreneurial activities and/or perceptions in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The results show that while the EU’s regional policies have some impact on entrepreneurial activities and attitudes, other variables such as gender and the presence of role models have a comparatively stronger impact.

Transition economies have lower rates of entrepreneurship than most developed and developing market economies. The difference is even more marked in the countries of the former Soviet Union than those of Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter links these differences partly to the legacy of communist planning, and the need to replace it with formal market-supporting institutions. Many of these changes, however, have now taken place. To analyze this longer term issue, the chapter highlights the necessarily slow pace of development of new informal institutions and the need to rebuild generalized trust. The chapter argues that changes are slower in the former Soviet Union than Central and Eastern Europe because communist rule was much longer, leading to a generational lack of institutional memory.

This chapter analyzes the relationship between poverty and entrepreneurship. Previous works have argued that only growth oriented entrepreneurs have a tangible effect on aggregate economic activity. The chapter complements these works by arguing that necessity entrepreneurship influences aggregate economic activity too, especially in developing countries. The chapter hypothesizes that lower per capita income and higher income inequality are positively associated to the number of people pursuing entrepreneurial activities because the latter helps to reduce poverty. The chapter tests the hypotheses using GEM data, the Human Development Index, and World Bank Governance Indicators. The results support our intuition and show that total and necessity early-stage entrepreneurship both have a positive effect on countries´ poverty reduction trends.

This chapter examines the impact of ambitious entrepreneurship (entrepreneurs expecting to grow their firm) and established high-growth firms (firms that have actually realized high growth rates) on macroeconomic growth using a large sample of GEM data in high and low-income countries for the period 2002-2005. The empirical evidence shows that ambitious entrepreneurship accounts for the whole effect of entrepreneurship on macroeconomic growth but that this is not the case when low-income countries are considered. Also, in contrast to ambitious entrepreneurs, the chapter finds the contribution of established high-growth firms to macroeconomic growth to be negligible. No connection between their prevalence rates and the share of ambitious entrepreneurs is found.

This chapter analyzes the prevalence of high-aspiration entrepreneurs at both the country and individual level. The descriptive analysis reveals significant variation in high-aspiration entrepreneurship across countries as well as between high and low-income economies. At the country level, the analysis of institutional influences shows the difficulty of firing to be negatively and significantly associated to the prevalence of early-stage high-aspiration entrepreneurs. The individual-level analysis confirms this effect. Thus, overall, the findings suggest that country-level factors exercise an important influence on individual-level entrepreneurial growth aspirations. The analysis also demonstrates the unique value of GEM data for the development of more robust and generalizable models of entrepreneurial growth aspirations.

What motivates entrepreneurs to export? The chapter looks at cross-country, cross-industry data focusing on firm stage and the innovativeness of products and technology to find how these characteristics correlate with export participation. Given an entrepreneur’s specific environment, products embodying new technologies and innovativeness, along with reduced competition, contribute to increased export participation. Entrepreneurs with higher education and incomes are also more likely to export. The chapter also finds that early-stage entrepreneurs report a higher rate of export participation than ‘established’ entrepreneurs. While the results are inconclusive as to why this pattern exists, they suggest that riskier early-stage exporters may fail or that, although they enter export markets, entrepreneurs exit them as domestic markets mature.

Dr. Patricia Carter Sluby (Fig. 5.1) is a primary patent examiner retired from the US Patent and Trademark Office and formerly a registered patent agent. She is also the author of three books about African American inventors and their patented inventions. Patricia’s father is William A. Carter Jr., and her mother is Thelma LaRoche Carter. Her father was the first black licensed master plumber in Richmond, VA, and his father also had the same distinction in Columbus, OH, years earlier. Her father was born in Philadelphia, PA, and attended college. Her grandfather went from Virginia to look for work in Canada and became a stonemason. Later he relocated back to the United States, where he soon married in Boston, MA, and several of his children were born there. Later, the family moved to Philadelphia where Patricia’s father was born. Her mother, who attended Hampton Institute, taught school and later managed the office for Patricia’s father’s business. Patricia’s mother was born and raised in Richmond, as were most of her maternal relatives. Patricia had three brothers. They were all born during segregation in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy. Patricia was born on February 15, in Richmond. She attended kindergarten through eighth grade in segregated schools that were within walking distance of home. In school, they studied from hand-me-down books, but her black teachers were well trained and well informed. They had bachelor’s degrees; some had master’s or even PhD degrees. To go to high school, Patricia took a city bus across to the east side of town, to the newly built school for black students, which incorporated eighth grade through twelfth grade. Her teachers were excellent instructors who lived in her neighborhood and knew her parents quite well. The teachers looked out for the neighborhood kids and acted as surrogate parents out­side the confines of the home. Teachers and principals were also great mentors, dedicated to their craft; they encouraged students to understand the world and function as responsible adults. Patricia excelled in science and math.

Ecological modeling has played a key role in scientific investigations of the SGS LTER during the past several decades. The SGS LTER site, focused initially on the Central Plains Experimental Range (CPER), was the main grassland research site for the Grassland Biome component of the U.S. IBP effort (Lauenroth et al., this volume, chapter 1). Initial development of ecosystem models occurred from 1 970 to 1 975 as p art of t he I BP . All the U.S. I BP projects (grassland, tundra, desert, deciduous forest, and coniferous forest biomes) included research on the development of ecosystem models, with the goals of using models to help formulate and interpret field experiments, and of projecting the impact of changes in management practices on ecosystem dynamics. Models were developed as part of the Grassland Biome project (Bledsoe et al., 1971; Innis, 1978), and included modeling specialists who worked with research biologists on the development and formulation of the ecosystem models. The modeling activities of t he U.S. IBP Grassland Biome project included developing the ELM Grassland model (Innis, 1978). The ELM model was a complex process-oriented model that was intended to be used at all the Grassland Biome sites in the United States. This model was developed by postdoctoral fellows who were to formulate the different submodels, and then link the submodels using software that was developed as part of the program. The submodels included a plant production submodel, a cattle production submodel, a linked nutrient cycling and soil organic matter submodel, a grasshopper dynamics submodel, and a soil temperature and water submodel. Biophysical and biological data from the different sites were collected to develop and test the model. Model development was constrained by lack of knowledge about the biological processes that control ecosystem behavior, and by lack of appropriate data to test the ability of the model to simulate ecosystem responses to changes in grazing and fertility management practices. However, the ELM Grassland model was quite successful at investigating the interactions of different components of the ecosystem, and at helping to formulate new research efforts.

The Human Development Index (HDI) developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is often regarded as an alternative to income-based measure of welfare. It is based on three indicators: longevity, education and standard of living. The main objective of this chapter are to present the dominated themes in the field of economic and human development; to highlight the data base for such research; and to trace the trends and potential areas of research. Emerging new trends and future areas of research include shift of research from macro to micro level; study on gender-related development; research on gender empowerment; study on poverty issues; work on health and nutrition especially in rural areas; research on quality of life in urban areas; work on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene; and research on sustainable development.