Entrepreneurship in the Information Age: An Empirical Analysis of the European Regions
Abstract: This thesis analyzes the relationship between digitalization and entrepreneurship using European regional data. Decelerating productivity in recent years raised questions about technology dissemination in the economy. This study inspects one of the dissemination channels, entrepreneurship, and links the empirical findings to Kirzner's and Schumpeter's theory of the entrepreneur. Based on econometric analysis, I find a significant relationship between digitalization and entrepreneurship. Specifically, digitalization increases the rate at which firms are created and it decreases their survival rate after 3 years. This influence seems to be dynamic in its nature as the effects of initial stages of digitalization reverse in its later phases. Moreover, the results are not uniform across Europe. The impact of digitalization on entrepreneurship varies among regions with the Nordic countries being especially responsive to the first stage of the digitalization process. The results suggest that digital technology uses new business creation and destruction as a dissemination channel. Public policies as well as corporate strategies may thus consider the complementarity of digitalization and entrepreneurship.
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