We would like to encourage researchers using GEM data to submit papers to the 18th Eurasia Business and Economics Society Conference, which is holding special sessions on entrepreneurship and young firm growth in developing countries.
New firm formation and young firm growth play a crucial role in increasing competition, inducing innovation and fostering the emergence of new sectors. However, the relationship between the rate of new firm creation and firm growth on the one hand and economic development on the other hand is heterogeneous across countries: in particular, many Developing Countries (DCs) have large numbers of ‘defensive and necessity’ entrepreneurs, who start a new business not because of market opportunities and innovative ideas, but because they need an income to survive. Moreover, DCs are characterized by important market failures and institutional constraints which may hamper innovative entrepreneurial start-ups and the growth of newborn firms.
Such heterogeneity can be better understood when shifting the focus to the micro foundations of entrepreneurship and firm growth. In this framework, this call for papers is addressed to contributions able to shed some light on these issues through evidence-based studies using micro-data from DCs. The abstract submissions will be selected on the basis of their degree of novelty, their econometric consistency and their relevance in terms of policy implications for the DCs.
The corresponding authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to the special sessions and will be exempted from conference fee payments. The best papers presented in these special sessions will be selected for publication in a special issue of the Eurasian Business Review.
Abstract submissions should be sent to Micheline Goedhuys and Marco Vivarelli and should be uploaded through the EBES web site. While the e-mail submission procedure is already active, the web site submission will start on August 1st, 2015 and will be open until November 1st, 2015.
Micheline Goedhuys (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht)
Marco Vivarelli (UCSC, Milano)