Measuring entrepreneurship: a digest of indicators

Over the past ten years, the OECD has addressed entrepreneurship issues in various analyses and reports. While these studies compiled relevant data to support specific research or policy tasks, no effort was made to establish an ongoing database of entrepreneurship across OECD countries. In 2004, the 2nd OECD Ministerial Conference on SMEs in Istanbul, “Promoting Entrepreneurship and Innovative SMEs in a Global Economy”, concluded that the statistical base for entrepreneurship research was weak and urged the OECD to develop “a robust and comparable statistical base on which SME policy can be developed”.

In 2005, the Kauffman Foundation provided the OECD the financial support for a feasibility study to explore what could be done to improve entrepreneurship data.

Encouraged by the feasibility study, the OECD launched the Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme (EIP) in 2006 in order to build internationally comparable statistics on entrepreneurship and its determinants. In 2007, Eurostat joined forces with the OECD to create a joint OECD-Eurostat EIP, and work began with the development of standard definitions and concepts as a basis for the collection of empirical data.

This report presents the results of the first round of empirical data collected under the EIP.

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Foreword

The importance of entrepreneurship

The OECD-Eurostat Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme (EIP)

Results of the first round of empirical data collected under the EIP - Introduction

A. Structural indicators on enterprise population

B. Entrereneurial performance

C. Determinants and impacts of entrepreneurship

Future Work under the Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme

Acknowledgements

Press releases

A New Global Measurement for Entrepreneurship, The Kauffman Foundation

OECD-Eurostat entrepreneurship indicators aim to support new business creation, OECD

In the news

Where Companies Grow, Wall Street Journal, 3 December, 2008

Start-ups and slow-downs, The Economist, 18 November, 2008