Response to Magnus Henrekson: Is more self-employment good or bad?

Is More Self-Employment Good or Bad? Comment on David Blanchflower

This comment provides a critical evaluation of Blanchflower’s (2004) survey of various aspects of self-employment and his overall normative conclusion that “more may not be better”. In order to draw normative conclusions regarding the optimal level of self-employment a number of issues ignored by Blanchflower need to be addressed. First, self-employment may or may not be entrepreneurial. Second...

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...

Sweden ' s Relative Economic Performance : Lagging Behind or Staying on Top ?

Small business activity does not measure entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship policy mainly aims to promote innovative Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. However, the rate of entrepreneurship is commonly proxied using quantity-based metrics, such as small business activity, the self-employment rate, or the number of startups. We argue that those metrics give rise to misleading inferences regarding high-impact Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. To unambiguously...

Gazelles as Job Creators: A Survey and Interpretation of the Evidence

It is often claimed that small and young firms account for a disproportionately large share of net employment growth. We conduct a meta analysis of the empirical evidence regarding whether net employment growth rather is generated by a few rapidly growing firms – so-called Gazelles – that are not necessarily small and young. Gazelles are found to be outstanding job creators. They create all or ...