Impact of Cultural Factors on Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Since the 1990s there has been extensive literature about the main factors impacting on entrepreneurship activity, and therefore on the genesis and development of entrepreneurship ecosystems. Among these factors, cultural ones are of the most interest because they are specific to every community and may become essential to boost or break the entrepreneurship activity. A lot has been written about these cultural factors, especially at reaching conclusions from specific cases. However, any kind of cross-country analysis of these cultural factors has been much less widely published, with some rare exceptions. Indeed, this chapter aims to fill this gap, enhancing knowledge about entrepreneurship with a cross-country analysis on the impact of cultural factors, using models and data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). Moreover, particular focus has been done on Japan because of its nature as an hapax legomenon country that lets us better appreciate the impact of these factors.