Entrepreneurial Culture and Economic Growth: Revisiting McClelland's Thesis.

We reestimate McClelland's (1961) thesis on entrepreneurial culture and economic development. McClelland found a strong positive correlation between measures of need for achievement ( N achievement) imagery in school textbooks and the subsequent rate of economic growth. Benchmarking our findings against generally accepted empirical growth models, we find no support for his thesis. This leads us to rethink the relationship between entrepreneurial culture and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]