10/13/2010 5:57:36 AM By
E.J. Reedy
Researchers who follow data on internet and phone connectivity know how spotty comparable international data is. For households, this is a fact, and when we move into the connectivity of businesses across countries, the data just doesn't exist. So, I was curious today when a new publication from European Commission came out covering "
E-communications" across the EU at the end of 2009. While I was disappointed to not see anything in their survey about how the households were using electronic communications to facilitate business (think of all the reports of people running small Internet businesses on the side), I was struck by one measure I found in the report - "calling over the Internet."
So when measuring if anyone in the household used their computer to make a phone call, the authors found surprisingly little change since 2008 but a lot of heterogeneity across countries. Lithuania and Latvia came in at the top, with more than 60 percent of households reporting these activities while Portugal and Spain came in at the bottom around 10 percent.
As someone who has relied on a digital phone to work for the last six years and because I have had many interactions with companies attempting to globalize which were relying on boundary-less communications like Skype, I think there is something in these statistics worth more of a look. At the least, these statistics seem to point to another indicator of the extent to which a particular country is internationalized.
10/13/2010 5:25:42 AM By
E.J. Reedy
The World Bank Group has released two additional years of data as a part of its
Entrepreneurship Database. For most countries, data is now current through 2009, thus reporting some of the first international entrepreneurship statistics since the economic crisis began. With 112 countries, many with several years time-series, the World Bank Entrepreneurship Database is worth a look for many academics looking for other measures to test entrepreneurship patterns within countries. It’s a parallel effort to some of the popular
Doing Business research and reports different demographics about limited liability corporations within the countries covered.
I expect this chart covering new business entry density in different development classes of countries will get the most press coverage with the current release.
It shows a not so positive picture for new business entry in the developed economies and a relatively bright picture in many developing economies. While the developed economies continue to see higher entry rates, they also saw trend lines which were significantly more effected by the financial crisis.
10/7/2010 9:00:00 AM By
E.J. Reedy
A couple of weeks ago I was in Paris for a great meeting at HEC on University Entrepreneurship organized by
Thomas Astebro. That left me with time for a morning status meeting with Mariarosa Lunati who is currently heading up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Entrepreneurship Indicators Project (EIP).
EIP is a program that Kauffman helped to launch more than five years ago but which has only in recent years started to
produce statistics that are harmonized across countries on important topics such as the number of high-growth companies, gazelles, and business births/deaths.
The OECD continues to push to get more countries into the series. Through their partnership with Eurostat, the data collection and production of the harmonized statistics has become mandatory within the European Union meaning that within two years all members of the European Union that have the technical capability to produce the EIP statistics will do so annually. While the U.K. might produce statistics this year, that will bring countries such as Germany into the fold. Many non-OECD countries are also now producing the statistics – namely Brazil – with Australia hopefully coming on line this year and Japan in 2012.
In November, EIP will produce two statistical briefs. One of the briefs is sure to be on timely indicators of entrepreneurship across countries while the other topic is still in discussion. These two pieces will be distributed widely and bring some focus to the topic of entrepreneurship before and during Global Entrepreneurship Week. At that same time, the OECD expects to post on its website updated Excel files of country statistics gathered. A longer, more in-depth report will be released in the spring of 2011. In this report, the OECD also expects to discuss hot topics in entrepreneurship measurement including green entrepreneurship, women’s entrepreneurship, and migrant entrepreneurship.
By all indications the EIP is attempting to develop a core set of indicators which are on their way to becoming good time series, as well as to remain relevant in discussing topical issues that can contribute to other OECD programs or identified needs. In this regard, I tip my hat to Mariarosa for the great work she is doing. It’s very exciting to see so many positive developments from this program. With the increasing number of years and countries available, I think the next few years should see much wider analysis of the data within the academic community.
Read the
OECD's full summary report of recent activities.
10/7/2010 5:47:55 AM By
E.J. Reedy