The Entrepreneurial Process: An International Analysis of Entry and Exit

This thesis deals with the entrepreneurial process from an international perspective. The first part explores which people decide to enter entrepreneurship. A distinction is made between two modes of entrepreneurial entry: taking over an existing firm

The Entrepreneurial Ladder and its Determinants

We test a new model where the entrepreneurial decision is described as a process of successive engagement levels, i.e., as an entrepreneurial ladder. Five levels are distinguished using nearly 12,000 observations from the 2004 “Flash Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship” covering the 25 European Union member states and the United States. The most surprising of the many results is that perception of lack of financial support is no obstacle for moving to a higher entrepreneurial engagement level whereas perceived administrative complexity is a significant obstacle. We also show that the effect of age on the probability of moving forward in the entrepreneurial process becomes negative after a certain age implying that if entrepreneurial engagements are not taken early enough in life they may well never be taken

The Stature of the Self-employed and its Premium

__Abstract__ Taller individuals typically have occupations with higher social status and higher earning

Entrepreneurial Exit in Real and Imagined Markets

Entrepreneurs exit their business due to selection mechanisms experienced in the market place. Next to this well known ex-post decision to exit, entrepreneurs select ex-ante whether they are willing to pursue an entrepreneurial career at all, or to give up these entrepreneurial intentions. This paper compares the role of personal and ecological factors as determinants of these two types of selection: exit in real and in imagined markets. Entrepreneurs in imagined markets are more likely to exit in strong welfare state regimes, while real entrepreneurs are more likely to exit when they have low levels of human capital and when they are located in metropolitan areas

Sustainable Entrepreneurship: The Role of Perceived Barriers and Risk

Entrepreneurs who start a business to serve both self-interests and collective interests by addressing unmet social and environmental needs are usually referred to as sustainable entrepreneurs. Compared with regular entrepreneurs, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurs face specific challenges when establishing their businesses owing to the discrepancy between the creation and appropriation of private value and social value. We hypothesize that when starting a business, sustainable entrepreneurs (1) feel more hampered by perceived barriers, such as the institutional environment and (2) have a different risk attitude and perception than regular entrepreneurs. We use two waves of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on entrepreneurship (2009 and 2012), which contains information on start-up motivations, start-up barriers, and risk perceptions of approximately 3000 (prospective) business owners across 33 countries. We find that sustainable entrepreneurs indeed perceive more institutional barriers in terms of a lack of financial, administrative, and informational support at business start-up than regular entrepreneurs. Further, no significant differences between sustainable and regular entrepreneurs are found in terms of their risk attitudes or perceived financial risks. However, sustainable entrepreneurs are more likely to fear personal failure than regular entrepreneurs, which is explained by their varied and complex stakeholder relations. These insights may serve as an important signal for both governments and private capital providers in enhancing the institutional climate

Social Entrepreneurship and Performance: The Role of Perceived Barriers and Risk

This study investigates if and in what way social entrepreneurs are hampered in turning their efforts into sustainable organizations. Using binary logit regressions and unique data containing approximately 26,000 individual-level data points for 36 countries, this

The Relation Between Health and Earnings in Self-Employment

Multiple studies have shown that, on average, the self-employed are healthier than wage workers. The link between the health of self-employed individuals and their financial performance in terms of earnings is, however, less understood. Based on human capital theory, we expect a positive link between health and earnings among the self-employed. For two reasons we expect the relationship between health and earnings to be stronger for the self-employed than for wage workers. First, the self-employed can more easily adapt their production activities such that they yield the highest returns to their human capital, including their health. Second, in the short term, the earnings of the self-employed are more dependent on the ability to work than the wages of wage workers. Our empirical analysis draws on data from the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, a longitudinal dataset (2001–2017). Our outcome variable is an individual’s total income derived from wage work and/or running a business. Health is measured using multi-item constructs for General health, Physical health, and Mental health from the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). We distinguish between wage workers and self-employed individuals with and without employees. Fixed-effects regressions reveal a significant positive relationship between health and earnings in self-employment as well as in wage work. As expected, this relationship is significantly stronger in self-employment than in wage work (for General health and Physical health, but not for Mental health). The latter result holds particularly for self-employment without employees. We provide evidence that the higher returns can be partly explained by the fact that the earnings in self-employment are more dependent on the ability to work (as proxied by the number of working hours) than earnings in wage work. We also find a negative relationship between health and job termination. Again, this relationship is stronger for the self-employed (without employees) than for wage workers (for General health and Mental health, but not for Physical health)

Perceived credit constraints in the European Union

The promotion and support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) forms an essential ingredient of the policies designed to help improve Europe’s economic performance. A key issue is whether SMEs face difficulty obtaining bank loans. Using pre-crisis survey data from 2005 and 2006 for nearly 3,500 SMEs (firms with fewer than 250 employees) in the European Union (EU), we investigate the determinants of perceived bank loan accessibility at the firm level and at the country level. Based on hierarchical (multi-level) binomial logit regressions, our findings show that the youngest and smallest SMEs have the worst perceptions regarding access to bank loans. The SMEs in nations with concentrated banking sectors are more positive about loan accessibility. In addition, a high fraction of foreign-owned banks is associated with improved perceptions regarding loan accessibility in the EU 15 but not in the EU 10

Life satisfaction and self-employment in different types of occupations

In this research, we investigate whether a positive relationship between life satisfaction and selfemployment (versus paid employment) exists while simultaneously considering two occupational dimensions: white-collar versus blue-collar work and high-skilled versus

Business Takeover or New Venture? Individual and Environmental Determinants from a Cross-Country Study

Whereas the determinants of entrepreneurial choice have been thoroughly analyzed in the literature, little is known about the preferred mode of entry into entrepreneurship, such as taking over an existing business or starting a new venture. Using a large international dataset, this study reports considerable differences in takeover preferences across 33 countries. Hierarchical (multi-level) regressions are performed to explore individual-level and country-level determinants of the preferred mode of entry. At the individual level, a person’s human capital, risk attitude, and inventiveness influence the preference for starting a new venture versus taking over an existing business. At the country level, the culture-inherent level of risk tolerance, the country’s level of innovation output, and the administrative difficulty of starting a new business are found to explain the between-country variation in the preferred mode of entry. Implications of our findings for research and practice are also discussed