Entrepreneurship and Growth An International Historical Perspective

A collection of eight articles by 17 specialists, this volume provides up-to-date research on the factors which contribute to the build up of entrepreneurship. It offers an international, comparative and historical perspective, with a special focus upon Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece. The authors take a quantitative approach in their exploration of these, as well as many other countries including England, Scotland and Argentina. Whilst several chapters explore entrepreneurial success as their main dependent variable and study the factors that explain it, others deal with a variety of topics such as education, innovation, immigration, kinship links, the role of investment, geographical factors, and macroeconomic variables. An Introduction and a brief chapter of conclusions provide the reader with a general theoretical background, a comparative perspective linking the methods and topics covered by the chapters, and an essay on the main conclusions to be drawn from the essays and the work as a whole.

GABRIEL TORTELLA has been associate professor at the University of Pittsburg and Full Professor at the Universities Complutense, Valencia and Alcalá, where he presently is Professor Emeritus. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in Law from the University complutense of Madrid. He has been visiting professor at the Universities of California (La Jolla), Harvard, Columbia, The Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton), El Colegio de Mexico, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (Buenos Aires) and The University of Bordeaux. He has also been president of the International Economic History Association. He is author of roughly one hundred scholarly articles and 20 books, among them, The origins of the twenty-first century.

 

GLORIA QUIROGA (Santander, 1970) is an assistant professor at the Universidad Complutense, Spain, and holds an M.A. degree in history from Universidad de Cantabria and a PhD in Economics from the University of Alcalá, Spain. She was previously a professor at the Universidad Carlos III and the Universidad de Alcalá. She has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard University. She has published extensively on the relationship between stature and standard of living conditions and her present research interest is the determinants of entrepreneurship in the history of Spain.

List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; G.Tortella & G.Quiroga
PART I: A MULTINATIONAL APPROACH
A Tale of Four Countries: Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in England, Scotland, France, Spain: A Comparative Approach; G.Tortella, G.Quiroga & I.Moral-Arce:
PART II: INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES
Entrepreneurs and Businessmen in Greece during the Long Nineteenth Century; J.Foreman-Peck & I.S.Pepelasis:
Business Groups in Argentina during the Export-led Growth Period (1870-1914); M.I.Barbero
Explaining Entrepreneurial Success: Evidence from the Italian Case (Nineteenth and Twentieth-centuries); P.Toninelli, M.A.Vasta & E.Zavarron
PART III: THE SPANISH CASE
Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship in Twentieth-century Spain; J.L.García-Ruiz & T.Pérez Amaral
An Approach to Entrepreneurial Success and its Determinants: the Case of Spain'; J.M.Ortiz-Villajos & S.Sotoca
PART IV: SOME LOCAL CASES: MINORCA AND MADRID
Entrepreneurship and Development: The Minorcan Model; J.Hernández-Andreu & A.Méndez
Did Spanish High Schools Breed Entrepreneurs? The Madrid Institutos of Cardenal Cisneros and San Isidro, 1860-1936; C.E.Núñez & B.Moreno
Conclusions; G.Tortella & G.Quiroga
Notes
Bibliography
Index