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Differentiating various types of entrepreneurs provides clues to the puzzle of why top-down policies often fail to create Schumpeterian entrepreneurship and the ecosystems where it thrives. Schumpeterian entrepreneurship is intrinsically contrarian, whereas public policy has a bias toward incremental innovation and replication of past success. If central planners knew what the next radical innovation would be, there would be no need for Schumpeterian entrepreneurs. Schumpeterian entrepreneurs create not only companies but also institutions in the entrepreneurial support system. These ever-evolving structures are too complex to design, and central planning instead reduces the space for organic institutional innovation.

The main aim of this study is to explain how institutional change, based on processes of democratization, governs the origin and diffusion of technological innovation across economies. This study suggests that institutional change, based on a progressive democratization of countries, is a driving force of inventions and adoption of usable innovations in society. Policy makers, considering the positive associations between institutional change, based on a process of democratization, and paths of technological innovation, can propose best practices directed to support a higher economic freedom in society, effective regulation, higher economic and political stability, good economic governance and higher level of education system. Overall, then, institutional change, based on democratization, is a precondition for sustaining fruitful paths of technological innovation to govern the development of economies in the presence of globalization and geographical expansion in world economic system.Keywords. Institutional change, Technological innovation, Patents, Technological change, Economic change, Social change, Regulatory quality, Rule of law, Political stability, Innovative outputs, Democracy, Democratization, Economic growth, Economic performances, Rich countries, Emerging economies.JEL. B52, F55, O17, O31, O33, O35, O43, P10, P14, P48.

Entrepreneurship plays a pivotal role for institutional change and economic development in transition and developing economies. Formal and informal institutions in such countries are often sub-par, but rather than being constrained by them, entrepreneurship can often affect institutions and contribute to their evolution. We highlight three entrepreneurial responses to the institutional status quo: an abiding response, an altering response, and an evasive response. Each response can be either welfare-enhancing or welfare-reducing; more importantly, each response can affect the institutional framework of the society in which it occurs. Better knowledge of entrepreneurial responses to institutions and the context in which they occur offers a promising avenue for future research and a potential way of sustaining lasting institutional change and economic development.

It is imperative that the economies of the European Union become more entrepreneurial to promote innovation and economic growth. To achieve these goals, we propose a reform strategy with respect to (i) the rule of law and the protection of property rights; (ii) the tax system; (iii) regulations governing savings, capital and finance; (iv) the organization of labor markets and social insurance systems; (v) regulations governing goods and service markets; (vi) regulations governing bankruptcy and insolvency; (vii) R&D, commercialization and knowledge spillovers; (viii) human capital investments; and (ix) informal institutions. Overall, the proposed institutional changes move in a liberalizing direction; however, one-size-fits-all policy reforms aimed at freer markets will not necessarily be successful. Instead, a successful reform strategy must consider country differences that affect the viability of reform without abandoning the long-term goal of institutional liberalization to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and growth.

The interplay between entrepreneurship and institutions is crucial for economic development; however, the view that institutions determine the extent to which entrepreneurial activity is productive is only part of the story. We argue that causality is bidirectional, in that entrepreneurship is also, for better or for worse, one of the main drivers of institutional change. Through their actions, entrepreneurs have a fundamental influence on institutions, whether they abide by them, actively try to alter them, or evade them. Particular attention is given to evasive entrepreneurship, an entrepreneurial function which, until recently, has been an underappreciated and poorly understood source of innovation and institutional change. We argue that the influence of evasive entrepreneurship on the economic trajectories of societies is likely to only grow in the future.

Evasive entrepreneurs innovate by circumventing or disrupting existing formal institutional frameworks by evading them. Since such evasions rarely go unnoticed, they usually lead to responses from lawmakers and regulators. We introduce a conceptual model to illustrate and map the interdependence between evasive entrepreneurship and the regulatory response it provokes. We apply this framework to the case of the file sharing platform The Pirate Bay, a venture with a number of clearly innovative and evasive features. The platform was a radical, widely applied innovation that transformed the Internet landscape, yet its founders became convicted criminals because of it. Applying the evasive entrepreneurship framework to this case improves our understanding of the relationship between policymaking and entrepreneurship in the digital age, and is a first step towards exploring best responses for regulators facing evasive entrepreneurship.

Although institutional reforms are necessary to increase rates of entrepreneurship in European countries, we argue that one-size-fits-all reform strategies are unlikely to be successful. Reform strategies must be informed by a better knowledge of the varieties of European capitalism and the institutional complementarities that drive these differences. We investigate these issues by gathering a number of potentially relevant entrepreneurial regime measurements as well as indicators of formal and informal institutions based on data available from the 2000s onward. We employ principal component analysis, factor analysis and cluster analysis to examine how 21 European countries and the United States cluster in the entrepreneurial and institutional dimensions. Our results reveal six country clusters, or entrepreneurial regimes, with a distinct bundle of entrepreneurial characteristics and institutional attributes. The main implication is that different reform strategies are appropriate to promote entrepreneurship and economic growth in European countries in different clusters.

In this paper, we argue that evasive entrepreneurship is an important source of innovation in the economy. Institutions may prevent or raise the cost of exploiting business opportunities, which can trigger evasive behavior because an entrepreneur may earn large rents by circumventing institutional impediments. Paradoxically, institutions may be less of a constraint for entrepreneurs than for other economic agents because entrepreneurs may be better able to evade them. Although evasive entrepreneurship can be both productive and unproductive/destructive, its dynamic character is more important because evasive entrepreneurship may be able to prevent economic development from being stifled by existing institutions during times of rapid economic change. Furthermore, if evasive entrepreneurship becomes sufficiently widespread and economically important, it may trigger a response from lawmakers and regulators, leading to institutional change with potentially important welfare implications. We illustrate this thesis by considering a number of real-word examples of evasive entrepreneurship.

The overwhelming majority of self-employed individuals are not entrepreneurial in the Schumpeterian sense. To unmistakably identify Schumpeterian entrepreneurs, we focus on self-made billionaires (in USD) from the Forbes Magazine list who became wealthy by founding new firms. In this way, we identify 996 billionaire entrepreneurs in over fifty countries during the 1996-2010 period. Interestingly, the rate of billionaire entrepreneurs per capita correlates negatively with self-employment rates. Countries with higher incomes, higher trust, lower taxes, more venture capital investment and lower regulatory burdens have higher entrepreneurship rates but less self-employment. Europe has a higher self-employment rate than the United States and East Asia. At the same time, Europe has a lower entrepreneurship rate than competitor regions. Europe underperforms in entrepreneurship despite having advantages such as a skilled labour force, good infrastructure, large markets and strong performance in technological innovation.

The overwhelming majority of self-employed individuals are not entrepreneurial in the Schumpeterian sense. In order to unmistakably identify Schumpeterian entrepreneurs we focus on self-made billionaires (in USD) on Forbes Magazine’s list who became wealthy by founding new firms. In this way we identify 996 billionaire entrepreneurs in over fifty countries in the 1996–2010 period. To our knowledge this is the first systematic cross-country study of billionaire entrepreneurs, an economically important group. We demonstrate that the common practice of relying on self-employment and related measures to proxy for entrepreneurship often gives rise to misleading inferences. Interestingly the rate of billionaire entrepreneurs per capita correlates negatively with self-employment rates. Countries with higher income, higher trust, lower taxes, more venture capital investment and lower regulatory burdens have higher entrepreneurship rates but less self-employment.

In this introductory chapter to a collective volume,* we build on Baumol’s (1990) framework to categorize, catalog, and classify the budding research field that explores the interplay between institutions and entrepreneurship. Institutions channel entrepreneurial supply into productive or unproductive activities, which likely accounts for a great deal of the disparate economic development of nations. What’s more, entrepreneurship is not only influenced by institutions—entrepreneurs often shape institutions themselves. Entrepreneurship abiding by existing institutions is occasionally disruptive enough to challenge the foundations of prevailing institutions. Entrepreneurs also have the opportunity to evade institutions, which tends to undermine the effectiveness of the institutions in question, or cause them to change for the better. Lastly, entrepreneurs can directly alter institutions through innovative political entrepreneurship. Similar to business entrepreneurship, innovative political activity can be either productive or unproductive, depending on the entrepreneurs’ incentives.

Previous research, notably Baumol (1990), has highlighted the role of insti-tutions in channeling entrepreneurial supply into productive, unproductive or destructive activities. However, entrepreneurship is not only influenced by institutions—entrepreneurs often help shape institutions themselves. The bilateral causal relation between entrepreneurs and institutions is examined in this paper. Entrepreneurs affect institutions in at least three ways. Entrepreneurship abiding by existing institutions is occasionally disruptive enough to challenge the foundations of prevailing institutions. Entrepreneurs sometimes have the opportunity to evade institutions, which tends to undermine the effectiveness of the institutions, or cause institutions to change for the better. Lastly, entrepreneurs can directly alter institutions through innovative political entrepreneurship. As business entrepreneurship, innovative political activity may be productive or unproductive, depending on the incentives facing entrepreneurs.

High-growth firms (HGFs) are critical for net job creation and economic growth. We analyze HGFs using the theory of competence blocs, linking firm growth to property rights and the interaction of complementary expertise. Specifically, we discuss how the institutional framework affects the prevalence and performance of HGFs. Firm growth is viewed as resulting from the perpetual discovery and use of productive knowledge. A key element in this process is the competence bloc, a nexus of economic actors with complementary competencies that are vital in order to generate and commercialize novel ideas. The institutional framework determines the incentives for these individuals to acquire and utilize knowledge. We identify a number of institutions that foster the emergence of competence blocs and the creation of HGFs. In particular, our analysis points to the pivotal roles played by tax structures, labor market regulation, and the contestability of currently closed service markets. Finally, we characterize institutions beneficial for sclerotic or dynamic capitalism, respectively, depending on whether they provide a favorable environment for the emergence of competence blocs and the creation of HGFs.

In this introductory chapter to a collective volume dealing with the political economy of entrepreneurship,* we argue, based on a suggested unifying framework, that political economy is a fruitful approach to entrepreneurship. The importance of institutions in structuring such an analysis is also emphasized. The introduction also introduces the selected articles and puts them in context. Vital functions of the capitalist economy are ascribed to the productive entrepreneur, but the selected articles also show that the social value of entrepreneurship must be evaluated as it is realized. Three facets of entrepreneurship are claimed to be of particular importance from a political economy perspective: (i) Entrepreneurship is dynamic in the sense that it adapts to the politically determined institutional framework within which it acts. Under propitious circumstances, it can be a powerful engine of growth, but it can also be channelled in unproductive and destructive directions. (ii) Entrepreneurship enters directly into the political system. The close connection to property rights constitutes a link between entrepreneurship and private versus public ownership and redistribution. Under unfavourable institutional circumstances, rent-seeking and predatory entrepreneurship, via the political system, offer greater profit opportunities than the market. (iii) A political economy approach is necessary in order to understand how the political system shapes the institutional setup. Here, it is emphasized that the distribution of political power is partly determined by economic wealth. Hence, it is relevant to broaden the analysis to the effects on wealth creation and wealth redistribution stemming from entrepreneurial activity.

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 regulation of labor markets. Institutions have far-reaching effects on entrepreneurship, and they largely determine whether or not entrepreneurial activity will be socially productive. Due to the responsiveness of entrepreneurship to the institutional setup it is maintained that in-depth analyses of specific institutions are required in order to further our understanding of the determinants of entrepreneurial behavior and the economic effects of entrepreneurship. The paper also demonstrates that it is problematic to use self-employment as an empirical proxy for productive entrepreneurship.

We outline a politico-economic growth system centered around the entrepreneur. By defining entrepreneurs in relation to economic rents we are able to develop a more general theory comprising central aspects of research within the fields of entrepreneurship/small business, public choice and new institutional economics. The entrepreneurial function is shown to depend crucially on the existing institutional framework. We also point to the necessity of viewing institutions as endogenously influenced by entrepreneurs. A typology of entrepreneurship is developed to further our understanding of the bilateral effects between institutional context and entrepreneurial activity. We use developments in modern history as a real-world context to substantiate our framework. Particular attention is devoted to the effects of enforcement of property rights and taxation, two of the most prominent institutions in the literature.