Entrepreneurship developing countries and develo

Authors: Wim Naudé

Publish Date: 2009/04/07

Volume: 34, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-

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Abstract

This paper provides an introduction to this special issue of Small Business Economics dealing with the longpostponed integration of entrepreneurship into the discipline of development economics and casting a formal light on the role of entrepreneurship in developing countries The paper departs from the premise that with more than a billion people living in absolute poverty it is of great practical importance to understand if and when entrepreneurship is a binding constraint on economic development and catching up in developing countries This in turn requires at least a deeper theoretical modeling of the entrepreneur in development economics This special edition contains a number of contributions emanating from the UNUWIDER project on Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity which integrates the disciplines of entrepreneurship and development economics These contributions model and explore the role of the entrepreneur in key areas of concern for development economics such as structural change and economic growth income and wealth inequalities welfare poverty traps and market failures This introduction discusses and contextualizes these various contributions and their implications for further theoretical and empirical workThe papers contained in this special edition of SBE have been prepared for the UNUWIDER project on Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity directed by Wim Naudé The papers were first presented at the Project Meeting ‘Entrepreneurship and Economic Development’ held in Helsinki Finland on August 21–23 2008 The papers were subsequently revised and then submitted to a doubleblind refereeing process I am grateful to the journal’s editors particularly Zoltan Acs David Audretsch Adam Lederer and Roy Thurik for facilitating the publication of this issue I also wish to thank Adam Swallow and Liisa Roponen for their editorial support the many referees for their role in the evaluation and selection of the papers and Barbara Fagerman and Lisa Winkler for their valuable assistance in the management of the project UNUWIDER gratefully acknowledges the financial contribution to the project by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the financial contributions to the research programme by the governments of Denmark Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs Finland Ministry for Foreign Affairs Norway Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sweden Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency—Sida and the United Kingdom Department for International Development

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