Governance Quality, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth

Abstract

Governance is a factor that affects new entrepreneurial activities and economic growth. However, the effectiveness of governance will vary depending on a country’s development level and entrepreneurial motivation. The main goal of this study is to use global entrepreneurship monitor (GEM) data and to apply a three-stage least squares (3SLS) regression to investigate the impact of six governance indicators on the entrepreneurship-growth nexus in 64 countries during 2010-2018. In addition, this paper describes whether the impact of governance indicators varies according to the country’s development stage. The results show that entrepreneurship and governance indicators have a significant impact on economic growth. However, depending on the development stage of the country, major differences can arise regarding the degree and nature of this relationship among countries. Specifically, the results show that entrepreneurship can promote economic growth in innovation-driven countries, but it cannot promote economic growth in factor- and efficiency-driven countries. In particular, the results show that opportunitydriven entrepreneurship (ODE) is only positively correlated with the economic growth of innovation-driven countries. In contrast, necessity-driven entrepreneurship (NDE) is negatively correlated with the economic growth of factor- and efficiency-driven countries. In addition, the survey results show that governance quality indicators contribute to entrepreneurial activities in the three groups of countries examined. This research contributes to the literature from a theoretical perspective (the use of good governance as an intermediary between entrepreneurship and growth) and a practical perspective (providing insights to improve the quality of governance to promote entrepreneurship and economic growth).