Entrepreneurship: The Key to Global Competitiveness

For more than a decade, the United States has lost manufacturing employment to low wage nations such as China and others on the Pacific Rim. While the Western industrialized nations can no longer compete in many of the lower skilled manufacturing sectors, they have maintained their status as incubators of new ideas and products. While a lack of access to financing has often been viewed as a key reason for a reduced level of new business starts in the West, public policy, and how it is perceived by the entrepreneurial community, can be an even larger obstacle to growth in this important sector. This paper examined policies that affect entrepreneurial vibrancy. The research identified policy consistency (a.k.a. “visibility”), financial stability, and global trade issues including insufficient protections for intellectual property, and household income as factors that influence entrepreneurial activity. Further study is needed to quantify the impact of policy uncertainty on entrepreneurial expansion, the number of jobs related to those decisions, the correlation between household income, entrepreneurial activity, and the universality of their impact across national borders