Financial and Institutional Reforms for an Entrepreneurial Society

In this paper, we introduce the special issueon Financial and Institutional Reforms for an Entrepreneurial Society in Europe. There are many reasonsfor Europe to want to make the transition to a moreEntrepreneurial Society. And for decades now, policymakers are trying to bring that transition about withvariations on the Beducate, deregulate and finance^approach to entrepreneurship. We argue that morefundamental reforms are required to improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem and bring about this transition.We then discuss the 12 contributions that pertain tofive different facets of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.The first two papers address the most fundamentalinstitutional foundations of the ecosystem. The nextthree papers discuss the (lack of) access to knowledgeand incentives to start innovative entrepreneurialventures. That is followed by three papers that focuson the institutions that (fail to) channel financial resources to such ventures and two papers that analyzethe relevance of labor market institutions. The specialissue concludes with two papers investigating how theinterplay of institutions and productive entrepreneurship results in economic growth