Ambitious Entrepreneurship, High-Growth Firms, and Macroeconomic Growth

This chapter examines the impact of ambitious entrepreneurship (entrepreneurs expecting to grow their firm) and established high-growth firms (firms that have actually realized high growth rates) on macroeconomic growth using a large sample of GEM data in high and low-income countries for the period 2002-2005. The empirical evidence shows that ambitious entrepreneurship accounts for the whole effect of entrepreneurship on macroeconomic growth but that this is not the case when low-income countries are considered. Also, in contrast to ambitious entrepreneurs, the chapter finds the contribution of established high-growth firms to macroeconomic growth to be negligible. No connection between their prevalence rates and the share of ambitious entrepreneurs is found.