Linking Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth in Sweden, 1850–2000

Open Access

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has gained increasing support from governments in recent decades. Entrepreneurship is considered to generate new jobs, innovations, and economic growth. In current research, a causal link between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth is maintained, where variations in entrepreneurship precede variations in economic output. Various models identify a positive effect entrepreneurship on economic development in advanced, innovation-driven economies in the most recent decades – a time when several Western countries transformed from 'managed' to 'entrepreneurial' economies. Self-employment is one of the most common indicators of entrepreneurship in both policy and research. The present study analyzes the relationship between growth in self-employment and economic growth in Sweden between 1850 and 2000. For the entire period (1851–2000), variations in self-employment had a significant, instantaneous positive correlation with GDP growth. Using Granger causality tests, the results in this study show that variations in self-employment did not granger-cause GDP growth. We discovered a structural break in GDP growth as early as in the year of 1948, which gives two different periods: 1851–1948 and 1949–2000. Between 1851 and 1948, Granger causality between self-employment and GDP in either (Granger) direction could not be established. For the other segment (1949–2000), GDP growth granger-caused self-employment growth, but not the other way around. Granger causality tests in the frequency domain show that for the period 1949–2000, but for no other periods, variations in self-employment lagged with GDP growth. Consequently, GDP growth preceded self-employment growth, but self-employment growth did not precede GDP growth. Given that self-employment is a suitable indicator for entrepreneurship, the empirical results in this study are, in several respects, in disagreement with dominating assumptions in mainstream entrepreneurship research.