Drawing on Baumol's concepts of productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship and relevant amendments, this book develops a conceptual framework which allows operationalising the concepts for empirical assessment. Using data from a longitudinal survey, the author further makes one of the first attempts to address these concepts empirically. The results show the importance of shifting the focus from firms' activities to output on both, venture and societal levels, short and long term. Overall, the findings suggest that productive entrepreneurs are less involved in behaviour such as tax avoidance or illegal business and show a higher level of entrepreneurial orientation.

An introductory, non-technical overview of what economics adds to our understanding of entrepreneurship. Identifies issues that can be resolved using economic analysis, presents the models that form the foundations of the economics of entrepreneurship, and reviews theoretical contributions and empirical findings consistent with these models.

This book explores whether there is reason to be against entrepreneurship. Just like literature on the darker sides of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, the book is an answer to the one-sided, overly positive and uncritical image of entrepreneurship. The “twist” in this book, in comparison with literature on dark sides of entrepreneurship, is to explore being against entrepreneurship. From various perspectives such as lexical semantics, Marxism, philosophy of science and psychology, the contributors contemplate on why there may be reason to be against entrepreneurship discourse as well as entrepreneurship practice. Some chapters are based on first-hand empirical data, others are conceptual. The main overall conclusion is that there are some strong arguments for being against entrepreneurship discourse, as well as for being against certain aspects of entrepreneurship practice. Before it is reasonable to be against entrepreneurship practice in total, a convincing and practicable alternative needs to be developed. This book will be valuable reading for entrepreneurship scholars, as well as academics working in the fields of business ethics, (critical) management, and international business.

Leading international scholars provide a timely reconsideration of how and why entrepreneurship matters for economic development, particularly in emerging and developing economies. The book critically dissects the evolving relationship between entrepreneurs and the state.

This book draws attention to the classic, seminal articles in entrepreneurship that have made profound contributions to the field’s emergence, development, and maturity. In each chapter, a classic is identified, ideas contained therein that are still relevant to the field are discussed, and subsequently follow-up research that is being conducted based on these ideas is highlighted, including possible areas of future research. Scholars will embrace this systematic effort to identify and reveal the contribution of classic articles in entrepreneurship research and their impact on subsequent scholarship.

Context Matters: Institutions and Entrepreneurship analyzes the connection between entrepreneurship and institutions. The goal is to provide a discussion of the literature on institutions in economics, develop the argument on the relationship between institutions and entrepreneurship and apply this logic to a variety of entrepreneurial settings - private for-profit, private non-profit and political. In addition to exploring entrepreneurship within several institutional settings, the authors also consider entrepreneurship on institutional arrangements. Context Matters: Institutions and Entrepreneurship develops the notion of institutions and provide insight into what this concept entails. The authors show how institutions matter for entrepreneurship and economic development. This if followed by a consideration of 'social entrepreneurship', 'political entrepreneurship', and the role of 'institutional entrepreneurs' and their impact on the formation and evolution of institutions. The authors end with a discussion of the implications for future research.

A sweeping global history of entrepreneurial innovation Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs—and their innovations—have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society. The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.