Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index 2013

Book excerpt: Acclaim for the 2011 edition: 'The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index . . . focuses on high-growth companies. It tries to measure the ambition of entrepreneurs as well as the prevalence of start-ups. It presents its results in ways that are designed to capture the attention of policymakers. It produces a ranking of 71 countries (for all their faults, nothing makes a politician jump like a league table). It also identifies bottlenecks that prevent countries from doing better. The index concludes that development and enterprise are correlated.' – The Economist The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index both captures the context features of entrepreneurship and fills a gap in the measurement of development. Building on recent advances in entrepreneurship and economic development, the authors have created an index that offers a measure of the quality of the business formation process in 118 of the most important countries in the world. The authors expertly capture the contextual feature of entrepreneurship by focusing on entrepreneurial attitudes, entrepreneurial abilities and entrepreneurial aspirations. The data and their contribution to the business formation process are supported by three decades of research into entrepreneurship across a host of countries. The unique index construction of individual and institutional measures integrates 31 variables from various data sources into 14 pillars, three sub-indexes and a 'super index'. The relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development appears to be more or less mildly S-shaped. The findings suggest moving away from simple measures of entrepreneurship across countries illustrating a U-shaped or L-shaped relationship to more complex measures, which are positively related to development. The model has important implications for development policy. This unique book will be invaluable for researchers, policymakers and entrepreneurs keen to expand their understanding of entrepreneurship and development.