Public policy interventions aimed at encouraging, supporting and developing small businesses are important for understanding entrepreneurship and small business management. This textbook is the first to provide teachers and students with a resource that gives an overview of how institutional and policy structures interact with small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures. Beginning with a brief introduction to policy processes, the text covers the main policy instruments for entrepreneurial market entry and start-up support, for on-going small business advice and financial support, and succession planning. It particularly focuses on policies that improve the Business Enabling Environment through macroeconomic policy, institutional reform, and deregulation of bureaucratic burdens. Theoretical rigour is complemented by detailed assessments of current policies around the world, including USA, advanced and emerging economies and Policy support from global institutions such as the World Bank and the ILO are included. Written by a pre-eminent scholar of public policy and entrepreneurship, this textbook provides a concise but thorough introduction to the subject for Master's students internationally. Policy recommendations in the author's conclusion also highlight the book's value to policy-makers as they adapt to the globalized, digital world.

This groundbreaking collection of essays by leading economists examines different aspects of entrepreneurship and its relation to public policy. Entrepreneurship has been a subject of much recent discussion among academics and policymakers because of the belief that it invigorates the economy—producing greater productivity, more jobs, and higher economic growth. President George W. Bush promoted his economic plan by pointing to its encouragement of entrepreneurship. Yet, despite its importance, the topic of entrepreneurship is underrepresented in the economics literature. The contributors to Public Policy and the Economics of Entrepreneurship examine different aspects of entrepreneurship and its relation to public policy to help us reach a better understanding of the economic role of entrepreneurs. The contributors, all prominent economists, first consider what policies effectively encourage entrepreneurship, discussing a possible role for government in venture capital markets, the effect of the tax code's subsidy of health insurance for the self-employed, and the impact of banking deregulation on entrepreneurial activity. Two contributors then examine entrepreneurship in "unexpected places"—not small businesses, but large pharmaceutical firms and nonprofit organizations. The final essays explore the effect of entrepreneurship on inequality, looking at statistical evidence of upward mobility for self-employed blacks and Hispanics and discussing the effect on entrepreneurial activity of policies to reduce wealth inequality. The contributors hope, by offering a rigorous economic examination of entrepreneurship, to foster better public policies that encourage and support entrepreneurial activity.

Recent decades have seen substantial growth in the range of assistance programmes for SMEs and entrepreneurs across the world. Once regarded as peripheral to the economy and public policy, the role of small firms and of entrepreneurship is now recognized as of key importance in the economic growth and development strategies of many nations. The range of interventions and support focused on promoting SMEs and entrepreneurship is substantial and expanding, so Government, SMEs and Entrepreneurship Development asks ‘what are some of the main policy instruments being used, and how effective are they?’ It considers policies in different countries, examines key interventions and tools used to promote entrepreneurship and SME development and concludes with contributions on how to best evaluate their effectiveness. The contributor chapters by academics and practitioners from businesses, enterprise development agencies and governments, are empirical or evidence-based and use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Drawing on experience from a wide range of both developed and emerging countries and economies, the contributions focus on the broad strategies that different governments and communities have adopted to foster entrepreneurship and SMEs; the policy tools and instruments that can be used to promote small business and entrepreneurship; and on the outcomes of policy instruments and the methods used to evaluate interventions. Their findings will help researchers, policy-makers, economic development officers, civil servants, elected officials, and business associations to better understand the issues in this important field.

Public policy interventions aimed at encouraging, supporting and developing small businesses are important for understanding entrepreneurship and small business management. This textbook is the first to provide teachers and students with a resource that gives an overview of how institutional and policy structures interact with small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures. Beginning with a brief introduction to policy processes, the text covers the main policy instruments for entrepreneurial market entry and start-up support, for on-going small business advice and financial support, and succession planning. It particularly focuses on policies that improve the Business Enabling Environment through macroeconomic policy, institutional reform, and deregulation of bureaucratic burdens. Theoretical rigour is complemented by detailed assessments of current policies around the world, including USA, advanced and emerging economies and Policy support from global institutions such as the World Bank and the ILO are included. Written by a pre-eminent scholar of public policy and entrepreneurship, this textbook provides a concise but thorough introduction to the subject for Master's students internationally. Policy recommendations in the author's conclusion also highlight the book's value to policy-makers as they adapt to the globalized, digital world.

A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.

This volume provides a lens to analyze public policy decisions involving entrepreneurship.

This book was originally published in 1999. At this time, the US economy had recently restructured itself, moving away from an industrial economy towards one based on information, while the European Union and Japan were left to worry about rising government deficits, inflexible businesses, persistent unemployment, and workers inadequately trained for the information age. Why did the US economy move beyond its chief competitors? This collection suggests that at least some of the answers to the pattern of divergent development can be found in the role of the entrepreneur. By examining the process that entrepreneurs play in the economy, the essays in this volume make a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the macroeconomy. Each chapter clarifies the role of entrepreneur in economic theory, the function of small and medium-size enterprises that they found and build and the impact of the innovations introduced on employment, productivity, and economic growth.