Social Capital and Entrepreneurship in Great Britain

Abstract

This paper examines the evidence for the existence of a link between social capital and the propensity to become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is proxied by self-employment and the influence of social capital is indicated both indirectly in aggregate-level data analysis and directly in micro-level data. The results suggest a modest, but heretofore neglected influence of social capital on entrepreneurship levels and suggest a reason why existing research on self-employment has tended to produce inconclusive and inconsistent results.