Authors

• Annamaria Bianchi (University of Bergamo)
• Silvia Biffignandi (University of Bergamo)

Overview

The present research focuses on the understanding of the determinants of entrepreneurship, in particular those related to the owner’s characteristics. Special attention is dedicated to the level of education of the owner.

With reference to the OECD Entrepreneurship Indicator Programme (EIP), we first introduce businesses’ performance measures and identify high-growth firms as those firms having at least a certain growth during the considered period. Categorization criteria for various variables under study are set up and a complete description of the characteristics of high-growth firms is analyzed. Determinants of the growth of a firm are identified.

Factors influencing the growth of a firm are education, previous start-up and average hours worked of the owner.

In a second step more detailed analysis for the education factor is performed. It is known that high-tech firms grow faster than non tech ones and they need high level of education. A natural question is therefore the following: is the education factor linked to the type of industry and its tech level? In other words, is education a real determinant of entrepreneurship or is technology level the real one? A partial answer is that the percentage of owners with an high education is higher for high-tech firms; on the other hand, high education has an impact on the growth of firms at all levels of technology.