Entrepreneurship, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and the Macroeconomy

Description

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.

'While recent years have seen a welcome growth of research into small companies and business start-ups, acadmeics still face the problem of getting a clear mental image of what exactly is under consideration ... Research in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) also faces some daunting problems of collecting and interpreting data ... this collection of 13 papers is an impressive indication of the value of systematic analysis in this field ... the substantive contributions [are] consistently well-written and often insightful ... the key lesson that emerges is the need for caution when attempting grand generalisations ... the volume is a testament to the principle that goos research should focus on interesting problems, even it the domain is complex and defies simplistic conclusions.' The Times Higher