On the relationship between inequality and entrepreneurship

Abstract

Research SummaryWe reexamine and explore the modern view of inequality against entrepreneurial market process theories, which leads us to three key assertions. First, we question the validity of income inequality as a proxy for true inequality (i.e., inequality of individual well‐being), observing nonlinearity between the two constructs. Second, we explore the entrepreneurial microfoundations of growing and shrinking inequality in market societies, arguing that individual inequality is primarily the outcome of abnormal gains from disequilibrating creative destructive processes. These shifts are temporary, however, as equilibrating (arbitraging) entrepreneurship competes away monopoly profits. Growing inequality trends, then, are seen primarily as the result of increasingly large, but also shorter, waves of creative destruction. Finally, we reconsider the issue of the injustice of inequality through this market process lens.Managerial summaryWe contribute three arguments to the debate over economic inequality. We are (or ought to be) concerned over differences in individual well‐being, not income. Studies of income inequality can be misleading. We argue that a key and so far overlooked source of economic inequality is entrepreneurship. Disruptive entrepreneurship (via innovation) redistributes economic resources away from the present industry, reallocating them in a more unequal redistribution, with the successful disruptor capturing an unequal share of resources. Imitative entrepreneurship, however, tends to mitigate this inequality, competing away abnormal profits while expanding new products’ diffusion among consumers. Finally, we observe that economic inequality may not be as unjust as previously thought, and we caution against corrective policy that might inhibit entrepreneurship.