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Despite the benefits of entrepreneurial activity on economic development, entrepreneurs do not have a good social status in all societies. While in some countries they are highly respected (Anglo-Saxon context), in others, their image is not so positive (European context). In this paper, we highlight these differences using a sample from the GEM project and explain the social status of entrepreneurs using the cultural profile of countries, which is measured with the Schwartz database. Our results show that some cultural profiles favor entrepreneurs’ social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurial failure is a phenomenon at least as important as entrepreneurial success. However, both scholars and practitioners have devoted much more attention to the latter. This study focuses on failure by suggesting that to understand it, the institutional context and the quality of entrepreneurship need to be considered. In a sample of 69 countries during the period 2007-2012, we illustrate their entrepreneurial failure rates according to the development of the institutional context and the quality of entrepreneurship. Our descriptive results show that entrepreneurship failure is lower when institutions are well-developed and when the quality of entrepreneurship is higher. More interestingly, the lowest rates of business failure are found when both dimensions –institutions and quality– point to the same direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs play a key role to introduce innovations in the market. However, high differences among them arose, with only a few firms being responsible of introducing most of new products and services. This research characterizes the entrepreneurs with a higher propensity to innovate. With this purpose, we use a sample of 65,000 entrepreneurs from 88 countries that have participated in the GEM project between 2008 and 2012. Our results show that, from a psychological view, the most important variables are risk tolerance, entrepreneurial alertness and confidence in one's skills. Related to human capital, education and previous experience play a key role. As a consequence, public policies oriented toward improving innovation should pay especial attention to these variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Traditionally, both competitor identification and the analysis of inter-firm rivalry have been approached from an industry perspective. After that, researchers or analysts have calculated aggregate indexes (such as CR or Herfindahl) that synthesize its structure. However, the availability of detailed information has allowed researchers to design new proposals that capture the interdependences arising among firms more precisely. In this paper, we use one of such proposals in order to describe the competitive situation in the Spanish banking sector. Specifically, we use one of the dimensions introduced by Chen (1996), market commonality, in order to identify the main rivals of every bank, savings bank or credit unions that operate in our country. Within this context, we pay special attention to the identification of the most important rivals for Banco Santander. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are everywhere, even in productivity statistics. This assertion, formulated as an antithesis of Solow's famous proposition, constitutes the starting point of this article. Our work fits inside a new research trend witch has received a growing interest during the last years, whose main purpose is to analyze the key drivers of the link between ICT investment and total factor productivity improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]