Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth [Hardcover]

By serving as a conduit for knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship is the missing link between investments in new knowledge and economic growth. The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship provides not just an explanation of why entrepreneurship has become more prevalent as the factor of knowledge has emerged as a crucial source for comparative advantage, but also why entrepreneurship plays a vital role in generating economic growth. Entrepreneurship is an important mechanism permeating the knowledge filter to facilitate the spill over of knowledge and ultimately generate economic growth.

Audretsch, Keilbach, and Lehmann artfully integrate a wide array of findings on firm and industry dynamics, R&D and growth, geography, and startups into a new theory of regional entrepreneurship. Researchers interested in the determinants of entrepreneurship and policy makers looking to promote entrepreneurial activity will find a revealing set of new empirical findings about regional entrepreneurship and economic growth. --Steven Klepper, Arthur Arton Hamerschlag Professor of Economics and Social Science Carnegie Mellon University

There has been an explosion of entrepreneurship research in economics in the past half-decade. This reflects both the importance of entrepreneurs as a spur to economic growth and the extent of interesting economic questions posed by the new firm phenomenon. This book, which is squarely positioned in this exciting and dynamic literature, helps build our understanding of this important phenomenon through an in depth study of the German experience. --Josh Lerner, Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking, Harvard Business School

Entrepreneurship makes an important contribution to economic growth, and creating an entrepreneurial economy has become a primary goal of public policy. This important book provides answers to two simple but profound questions: *why* does entrepreneurship matter, and *how* does entreprenelS0