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

Saul Estrin; Tomasz Mickiewicz; Ute Stephan

doi:10.1111/etap.12019

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

Saul Estrin¹; Tomasz Mickiewicz²; Ute Stephan³

¹ London School of Economics, CEPR and IZA, London WC2A2AE, UK. · ² Economics at Aston University. · ³ University of Sheffield Management School (Institute of Work Psychology and CREED).

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 2013

We model and test the relationship between social and commercial entrepreneurship drawing on social capital theory. We propose that the country prevalence rate of social entrepreneurship is an indicator of constructible nation–level social capital and enhances the likelihood of individual commercial entry. We further posit that both social and commercial entrepreneurial entry is facilitated by certain formal institutions, namely strong property rights and (low) government activism, albeit the latter impacts each of these types of entrepreneurship differently. We apply bivariate discrete choice multilevel modeling to population–representative samples in 47 countries and find support for these hypotheses.

DOI: 10.1111/etap.12019
Volume: 37 (3)
Pages: 479-504
Language: en
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