The intersection of the fields of entrepreneurship and development economics: A review towards a new view

Despite the popularity of promoting entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for economic development, there is little scientific basis on which policy makers can lean. The scholarly fields of entrepreneurship economics and development economics have been elaborated in isolation and only recently started to intersect. This growing intersection is, however, still fragmented, ad hoc, not based on a unifying theoretical approach and suffering from lack of proper measurement. Better policy making will hence benefit from the extension and deepening of the intersection of these fields. We contribute in this regard by providing a conceptual basis for the eventual elaboration of such a unified theoretical approach. We do so by providing an up-to-date review of the intersection of the two fields by noting the progress and gaps; by delineating the externalities associated with entrepreneurship in development and by proposing a synthesis definition of entrepreneurship.