Entrepreneurial Capital And Economic Growth: Theoretical And Empirical Analysis

Since the emergence of the word of entrepreneur which came form French for several centuries, it had been studying by many researchers from different disciplines. Although the role of entrepreneurs had been proven to be very important in economic development, there was a serious lack of discussion in orthodox economic growth theories. In traditional economic growth theory, for the reason of assumptions, theoretical framework, and so on, it was excluded from the traditional economic growth theory. In modern economic growth theory, because the entrepreneur was often linked to change, so it disappeared in many of the mathematical models. The situation began to change since 1980s, On the one side, plenty of small and medium-sized enterprises came into born with the pace of technological change and globalization, and became the pillar of economic growth increasingly in America and Europe. On the other side, the entrepreneur was realized as another critical factor in explanation of disparity among regions or countries. All these mean that the role of entrepreneur should be considered in orthodox economic growth theories. The proposition of entrepreneurship capital is one of the latest developments with it.Entrepreneurship capital was proposed by an American economist whose name is Audretsch in 2001 from the concept of Social Capital. It has been regarded as the third important factor after material capital and knowledge capital. It stresses the endogenous characteristic of entrepreneurs and positive effects of entrepreneurship. As a set of favorable factors and advantageous circumstance that facilitates the entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship capital improves the economic growth indirectly by entrepreneurship. The discussion on role of entrepreneurship capital has very important meanings at present time. On the one hand, it provides a better framework to study the relationships among entrepreneurship and economic growth. On the other hand, the focus on increment is helpful to put the entrepreneurs into production function, and is helpful to analysis the contribution of entrepreneurship.In China, many scholars have been studied the role of entrepreneurs since 1978, their works also has many meaningful conclusions, but literatures about entrepreneurship capital were still less, and relative studies were also limited. This paper try to introduce and extend the proposition of entrepreneurship capital on the basis of Audretsch's work, and make empirical test between entrepreneurship capital and economic growth with a substituted variable indirectly in order to understand the role of entrepreneurship in economic growth better.The contents as following:Firstly, the part of basic theory, this part deepens and extends the theory of entrepreneurship capital about concept, mechanism and composition on the basis of an overview of relative papers (Chapter2 and Chapte3). Secondly, the part of empirical test, this part conducts an empirical test on the relationship between entrepreneurship capital and economic growth which related to the history of world economic growth and modern Chinese economic from the temporal and spatial dimensions by a case and time series-data test and a panel-data analysis(Chapter4 and Chapte5).This part also gives some reasonable explanations to the empirical results and make further discussion about deep-level factors that related with them(Chapter6 and Chapte7). Thirdly, the part of conclusions, on the basis of affirming the active role of entrepreneurship capital in modern economic growth, we discuss the problems of Chinese sustainable economic growth and corresponding entrepreneurial policy (Chapter8 and Chapte9).The conclusions are as follow:Firstly, the difference of entrepreneurship capital among countries is the main reason of the world economic dispersion in history. Secondly, empirical results imply that China's traditional entrepreneurship capital has obvious positive correlations with its GDP and labor productivity during the period of China's reform since 1978, the results also showed that the difference of entrepreneurship capital was the major cause for horizontal difference (different periods) and vertical difference (different regions) of China's economic performance. The reasons were that focus of central government's policies and its distribution of resources appeared a tendency of shift from country to town since 1990s, and the mode of economic growth chose by state government will also influence the subsequent vertical differentiation. So, entrepreneurial policy could be a very helpful means for achieving the Chinese economic sustainable economic growth. Thirdly, the item "incremental reform" may be not a perfect description for Chinese reform and economic growth because of the policy diversion in 1990s.