Entrepreneurial studies

Entrepreneurial economics is the study of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship within the economy. The accumulation of factors of production per se does not explain economic development. They are necessary inputs in production, but they are not sufficient for economic growth.

Human creativity and productive entrepreneurship are needed to combine these inputs in profitable ways, and an institutional environment that encourages free entrepreneurship becomes the ultimate determinant of economic growth. Thus, the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship should take center stage in any effort to explain long-term economic development. Early economic theory, however did not lay proper attention to the entrepreneur.

“The theoretical firm is entrepreneurless – the Prince of Denmark has been expunged from the discussion of Hamlet”. This oft-quoted observation was made by William J. Baumol in the American Economic Review. The article was a prod to the economics profession to attend to this neglected factor.

If entrepreneurship remains as important to the economy as ever, then the continuing failure of mainstream economics to adequately account for entrepreneurship indicates that fundamental principles require re-evaluation. The characteristics of an entrepreneurial economy are high levels of innovation combined with high level of entrepreneurship, which result in the creation of new ventures as well as new sectors and industries.

Entrepreneurship is difficult to analyse using the traditional tools of economics e.g. calculus and general equilibrium models. Current textbooks have only a passing reference to the concept of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur. Equilibrium models are central to mainstream economics, and exclude entrepreneurship..

Coase believed that economics has become a "theory-driven" subject that has moved into a paradigm in which conclusions take precedence over problems. "If you look at a page of a scientific journal like Nature," he said, "every few weeks you have statements such as, 'We’ll have to think it out again. These results aren't going the way we thought they would.' Well, in economics, the results always go the way we thought they would because we approach the problems in the same way, only asking certain questions. Entrepreneurial Economics challenges fundamental principles, using insights from models and theories in the natural sciences."

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Wikipedia