Multilevel analysis of the determinants of innovative entrepreneurship across Europe
Bulat Sanditov, UNU-MERIT
We investigate how individual-level variables and country-level variables affect entrepreneurship rates. We make a distinction between entrepreneurship involving innovation, and other entrepreneurship (which we call imitative). We first find that the scope of country-level variables to explain the probability of an individual to become an entrepreneur is low, i.e., entrepreneurship seems to be driven mainly by individual-level characteristics. Still, we find some significant country effects on entrepreneurship, while the explanatory power of the individual-level variables that we are able to use is somewhat limited as well. The effects of individual-level variables that we find are mostly in line with previous results in the literature, but we also find that individual factors have similar effects on the probability of entering innovative and imitative entrepreneurship, although education is more important for innovative entrepreneurship while working status is more important to imitative entrepreneurship. With regard to country-level variables, we find different signs of the effect of the level of economic development on innovative and imitative entrepreneurship, which may explain earlier findings about a U-shape relationship between GDP and entrepreneurship rates. We also find that the effect of country-level business R&D and public R&D expenditures significantly explain innovative entrepreneurship, but this relationship depends on interactions with individual-level variables.
About the speaker
Bulat Sanditov is a research fellow at the UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University. He received PhD in economics from Maastricht University. Prior to joining UNU-MERIT he was a postdoctoral fellow at Bocconi University (Milan, Italy). His research interests include university-industry linkages, structure and dynamics of knowledge networks, path-dependency in collective learning, effects of social structure on consumers' behaviour.
Venue: UNU-MERIT Conference Room
Date: 01 April 2011
Time: 16:00 - 17:00 CET
