Entrepreneurship: theory, institutions and history. Eli F. Heckscher Lecture, 2009

Abstract

This paper reviews the modern economic theory of the entrepreneur. It argues that the study of entrepreneurship acts as a bridge between key disciplines – economics, sociology, management studies and economic and business history. It introduces the notion of disputable knowledge and argues that societies that recognise the disputability of both philosophical and practical knowledge are most likely to incubate successful entrepreneurs.

Keywords:

• entrepreneur
• firm
• network
• history
• knowledge

Notes

1. William J. Baumol, ‘Entrepreneurship in Economic Theory’, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 58 (1968): 64–71.

2. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 9th ed., ed. C.W. Guillebaud (London: Macmillan, 1961).

3. Leon Walras, Elements of Pure Economics, or the Theory of Social Wealth, ed. W. Jaffe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954)

4. Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu, ‘Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy’, Econometrica 22 (1954).

5. Mark Casson, ‘Marshall and Marketing’, in From Classical Economics to the Theory of the Firm: Essays in honour of D.P. O'Brien, ed. J. Creedy (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003), 194–219.

6. For a comprehensive review of the relevant literature see, for example, Scott Shane, A General Theory of Entrepreneurship: The Individual – Opportunity Nexus (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003); Zoltan J. Acs, and David B. Audretsch, Handbook of Entrepreneurship Research: An Interdisciplinary Survey and Introduction (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003); Mark Casson, Bernard Yeung, Anuradha Basu, and Nigel Wadeson eds., Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

7. D. Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, ‘What Makes an Entrepreneur?’, Journal of Labour Economics 16, no. 1 (1998): 26–60.

8. Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, ed. R. Opie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934); Joseph A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles (New York: John Wiley, 1939).

9. William A. Baumol, ‘Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive and Destructive’, Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 893–921.

10. George L.S. Shackle, Expectation, Enterprise and Profit: The Theory of the Firm (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970).

11. Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Generale, ed. H. Higgs (London: Macmillan, 1931)

12. Frank Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1921).

13. Israel M. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973); Israel M. Kirzner, Perception, Opportunity and Profit (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979).

14. Mark Casson, The Entrepreneur: An Economic Theory, 2nd ed. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003).

15. Friedrich A. von Hayek, ‘Economics and Knowledge’, Economica, New series, 4 (1937): 33–54.

16. Theodore W. Schultz, Economics of Human Capital: The Role of Education and of Research (New York: Free Press, 1971).

17. Hayek, ‘Economics and Knowledge’.

18. Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1945).

19. David A. Harper, Entrepreneurship and the Market Process: An Inquiry into the Growth of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1996).

20. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development.

21. David C. McClelland, The Achieving Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961).

22. Reuven Brenner, History: the Human Gamble (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

23. R.E. Kihlstrom and J.J. Laffont, ‘A General Equilibrium Entrepreneurial Theory of Firm Formation Based on Risk Aversion’, Journal of Political Economy 87 (1979): 719–48.

24. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship.

25. See, for example, Shane, A General Theory of Entrepreneurship.

26. Harvey A. Leibenstein, General X-efficiency Theory and Economic Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

27. Ronald Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

28. Mark Casson, Information and Organization: A New Perspective on the Theory of the Firm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

29. Mark Casson, ‘Entrepreneurship and the Theory of the Firm’, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization 58 (2005): 327–48.

30. Oskar Lange and Fred M. Taylor, On the Economics Theory of Socialism, ed. B.E. Lippincott (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1938); George A. Richardson, Information and Investment: A Study in the Working of the Competitive Economy, new ed. by D. Teece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

31. Peter J. Buckley and Mark Casson The Future of the Multinational Enterprise (London: Macmillan, 1976).

32. See, for example, Oliver E. Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1985); Casson, Information and Organization.

33. Jay Barney, ‘How a Firm's Capabilities Affect Boundary Decisions’, Sloan Management Studies 40, no. 3 (1999): 137–45.

34. Edith T. Penrose, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959).

35. Marina Della Giusta and Zella M.E.King, ‘Enterprise Culture’, in Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship, ed. M. Casson, B. Yeung, A. Basu, and N.Wadeson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 629–47.

36. Baumol, ‘Entrepreneurship’.

37. Mark Casson, ‘Culture and Economic Performance’, in Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, ed. V.A. Ginzberg and D.Throsby (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2006), 359–97.

38. Alfred J. Chandler, Jr, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

39. Mark Casson, The World's First Railway System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

40. Geoffrey G. Jones and Mary B. Rose (eds) Family Capitalism (London: Frank Cass, 1993).

41. Mark Casson, ‘The Economics of the Family Firm’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 47, no. 1 (1998): 10–23.

42. Andrew Godley, Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship in New York and London, 1880–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).

43. Schumpeter, Business Cycles; Christopher Freeman and Francisco Louca As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

44. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Glasgow ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1776).

45. Schultz, Economics of Human Capital.

46. Barney, ‘How a firm's capabilities affect boundary decisions’.

47. Baumol, ‘Entrepreneurship’.