Special Issue Monográfico 2013 'Entrepreneurial activity and regional development'

The main objective of this special issue is to analyze the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial activity and its impact on regional development. The last convulsive decade, with expansionary and recessionary economic cycles, offers a good opportunity to study how economic cycles affect the propensity of becoming an entrepreneur and, in turn, to observe how entrepreneurial activity contributes to change (improvement) in the economy.

Previous studies have analyzed the complicated endogenous relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth, but these studies have examined the countries’ performance under a static view. This special issue focuses on analyzing complex entrepreneurial behavior from a sub-national perspective (examining several regions in the Spanish autonomous communities) and a dynamic view (using data from several years), which adds rigor and valuable knowledge to this research field.

This paper explores the contribution of a selection of elements representative of human capital and perception as determinants of entrepreneurship in different stages of the economic cycle. The results confirm the significance of self efficacy, the perception of opportunities, and the fear of failure, and highlight the importance of personal knowledge of entrepreneurs. They remain influential in different economic times in which their analyses have been replicated, although some differences are felt that point to, in contraction periods, a loss of influence of the confidence in one’s own abilities, compared to an increase in the case of judgment on the existence of opportunities in the environment, and in the case of the presence of entrepreneurs in the surrounding context. In contrast, the behavior of the fear of failure, as a barrier to entrepreneurship, remains unchanged in an adverse context with respect to a positive context due to reduced opportunity costs.

Entrepreneurship research is progressing towards the construction of indexes that integrate the information of the three predominant approaches: the entrepreneurial activity output; the population’s entrepreneurial behavior, values and aspirations; and the context in which entrepreneurship takes place. In this study we compare the Global Competitiveness Index data, one of the objective sources of information selected among those recognized as descriptors of national contexts, with the national entrepreneurial context qualitative information provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The main purpose of this research is to contribute to the knowledge of entrepreneurial context sources of information by opening a discussion around the usefulness and contribution that could make the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor source in this field, and to determine if it is recommendable to proceed to its formal validation in the short time. The obtained results evidence that the two sources do not overlap to the degree of substituting one by the other and that the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor provides relevant qualitative details about the state of entrepreneurial context that are interesting to complement the Global Competitiveness Index information. The conclusion is to recommend the formal validation of this source, being also necessary to make comparisons with other relevant sources and to clear up its role in the progress of the integrated indexes construction.

This paper aims to identify the institutional and economic factors that influence the perception of business opportunities, and the latter’s influence on entrepreneurial intention. We use an institutional approach for the Spanish Autonomous Regions for the period 2004-2010, based on the data available in the regional GEM reports, supplemented by data from the INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística - Spanish National Institute of Statistics). By applying a structural equation model, we observed that the perception of abilities (self-efficacy) positively and significantly affects both the perception of opportunities and entrepreneurial intention, and that the perception of opportunities affects entrepreneurial intention.

Individual perceptions have been shown to affect the decision to start a new firm. This decision is also contingent upon the context in which actions are taken. However, not much is known about the joint impact of entrepreneurs’perceptions and the urban/rural environment where the firm is created. The purpose of this paper is to examine how nascent entrepreneurship is influenced by individual perceptions and the urban/rural context. Using data from the Spanish GEM project, the results of a series of logistic regression models indicate that opportunity perception and self-efficacy have a positive influence on the probability of becoming a nascent entrepreneur. Interestingly, we also find that individuals in rural areas who perceive new opportunities are more likely to become nascent entrepreneurs rather than those who live in urban ones.

Entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity are considered key factors of the economic growth because they usually bring on behaviors aligned with the market development, productivity and social cohesion. This study aims to analyze the factors that influence the entrepreneurial role, and provide a better understanding of this behavior from a dynamic perspective, in order to support policies for encouraging entrepreneurship. To do this we used the data presented in the report of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), in its 2011 edition, which is based on an empirical analysis of a sample of 27,000 Spanish citizens.

The results confirm that the perception of market opportunities, and having the skills and knowledge required to create new companies are explanatory factors of the entrepreneurial activity. However, it is also possible to assert that the increase of the entrepreneurial activity rate motivated by the need of self-employment of the entrepreneur influences the increase of fear of failure, and this could generate a dynamic harmful to the business creation in the medium term.

Our model aims to support the decisions of public institutions about the incentive measures for entrepreneurs. This work contributes to the study of entrepreneurship and business creation from a multidisciplinary perspective, incorporating psychological, sociological and economic approaches from a dynamic perspective. It also allows an in-depth analysis of factors undetected with other methodologies.

We examined the determining factors of entrepreneurship by estimating a logit model based on entrepreneur’s social capital (networking) and the geographical location (region) of the business activity. This analysis has shown significant differences of these factors according to the stage of the entrepreneurial process. These results have let discuss the implications for the entrepreneurial dynamic, in order to support new policies in favor of entrepreneurship.

This paper analyses the effect of the perceived advantages and disadvantages of entrepreneurship surrounding the starting of a new business and it is based on the Theory of Reasoned Action. The sample contains 274 students of the Faculty of Business and Economics (University of Cantabria). A structural equation approach is used to test the research hypotheses. The results obtained show that the entrepreneurship advantages influence a college student’s attitude and later have an impact on their entrepreneurial intentions. However, the disadvantages associated with entrepreneurship have no significant effect.

The theoretical literature has explored the potential benefits of the interaction between universities and entrepreneurs and there is some empirical evidence that supports the positive impact of entrepreneurship education in the subsequent propensity to become an entrepreneur. The purpose of this paper is study if higher education for entrepreneurship is reflected in entrepreneurship activities at the regional level. Replicating the methodology used by Coduras, Urban, Rojas and Martínez (2008) in Spain, we compare, in an exploratory way, the experience in Chile using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The main results indicate that there is low interaction between entrepreneurs and universities and there is not enough impact to significantly affect entrepreneurial activity. Moreover, entrepreneurship education does not increase intentions to be an entrepreneur.

Informal investors play a key role to meet the financing needs of business projects in early stages. However, this is a group in which there are different kinds and ways of dealing with investment. One of these profiles is associated with the figure known as business angel, whose main distinguishing feature is its ability to add smart capital in the form of knowledge, experience and contacts. The aim of this paper is to determine to what extent the specific profile of business angels differ from the rest of informal investors. With a sample of over 800 informal investors in Spain, the empirical results of this study show that the higher income, skills and entrepreneurial training and the less family ties to the entrepreneur, the greater the probability of belonging to business angel investment group.