A Critical Assessment of the National Expert Survey Data of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

Data collected through the National Expert Survey (NES) of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) are widely used to benchmark and assess the quality and impact of national entrepreneurial ecosystems. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the publicly available NES data, we show that the construct validity of the survey is not sufficient and that the experts differ so greatly in their evaluations of the entrepreneurial framework conditions (EFCs) in a country that meaningful cross-country and within-country (longitudinal) analyses are precluded. We conclude that the currently available NES data are not suited for motivating policy decisions.