Venice Summer Institute 2015: The Economics of Entrepreneurship: Bringing Entrepreneurship Back into Economics
Venice International University, San Servolo, Venice
Since the writings of Marshall (1890) and Schumpeter (1921), entrepreneurial activities are universally considered a crucial ‘ingredient’ in promoting and sustaining economic growth. Under this notion, entrepreneurs are considered critical economic agents who turn ideas into valuable businesses. As the world economy becomes more globalised yet more agglomerated, fostering entrepreneurial talent has become ever more important: dense local clusters of entrepreneurship are the real powerhouses of modern economies, capable of leveraging local knowledge spillovers and agglomeration forces to produce the ‘Next Big Thing’ and endow it with global reach.
Despite its crucial importance to economic policymaking and a deeper understanding of the functioning of economic activities, not enough is known about what makes an entrepreneur, what role entrepreneurs play in fostering agglomeration and urban economies, and what policies are needed to successfully breed and promote entrepreneurial success.