We are supporters of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Entrepreneurship Indicators Program (EIP). Last week, the steering group for the EIP met at Kauffman for one of their annual meetings.  While not all the details of the meeting will be of interest, I thought I'd highlight a few key points that came out of the meeting with wider implications.  These notes are abstracted from the official minutes.  If you have contacts at a national statistical office and can encourage them to consider providing statistics for this program, please contact Koen DeBacker at the OECD.

Country Coverage

The 2008 Digest publication presented data for 18 countries; new data on additional countries will be included in the 2009 publication (Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, maybe Israel).  Continued efforts will be undertaken to broaden the coverage of the EIP, not only to OECD countries, but also to emerging/developing countries (UNCTAD, for example) and regions (e.g. Andalucia in Spain, region in China).  

It is agreed that:

  • Interested countries and regions can opt for a ‘light’ version of the EIP: not providing all the indicators, and if necessary to provide indicators that do not follow the definitions based on business registers and hence may not be completely comparable; published results should clearly indicate the differences in methodology;
  • Richard Seymour will provide the OECD the results of an exercise about entrepreneurship indicators in developing countries;

Indicators of Entrepreneurial Determinants

In addition to the work on indicators of entrepreneurial performance, the EIP plans to undertake more work on indicators of entrepreneurial determinants during the coming year.  This line of work will be different since national statistical offices (NSOs) have limited data on entrepreneurial determinants, and hence different sources have to be analysed and new definitions might have to be drafted.

It is agreed that:

  • The work will differ across determinants; for each determinants the available evidence has to be analysed; if available data are insufficient, new definitions and indicators might have to be constructed; The OECD will draft a strategy how to tackle the different determinants;
  • If possible, countries are asked to provide help and resources; additional budget could be sought from new funders on specific topics;
  • It is suggested to include the complete interactive list (to be updated on a regular basis) of indicators on  the EIP-website, while publications will only include a subset; the quality of the indicators has to be assessed and reported on;
  • Countries are asked to send the OECD the results (if any) of the work already undertaken on possible indicators of entrepreneurial determinants (e.g. FORA Quality Assessment).

More Timely Indicators

In the light of the financial/economic crisis, the EIP has received a significant number of questions to include more timely indicators on entrepreneurship.  Given that the EIP results are validated by NSOs, existing data are of high quality but less timely.

It is agreed that:

  • Maximal efforts should be undertaken to include some more timely indicators in the next publication;
  • Since NSOs are not really interested/equipped to do this, some creative effort within the EIP is needed;
  • The objective is not to ‘forecast’ the existing indicators; rather (more timely) data series that are highly correlated with extisting indicators might be presented;
  • Priority should be given to entry, employment created by new firms and exit (although larger time lag);

New Publication

A new publication of the EIP  is planned by the end of 2009; it will have the same format as the 2008 Digest but will also include indicators on entrepreneurial determinants in addition to entrepreneurial performance.  A selection of available and qualitative indicators on determinants will be included.