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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether public corruption influences entrepreneurial activity in the USA. Because the true underlying level of corruption is inherently unobservable, it cannot be factored into business venturing decisions. The authors hypothesize, therefore, that new business venturing should be related to the expected corruption level.

The authors follow Cordis (2009) to calculate the expected rate of public corruption given observed levels of public corruption. The authors embed the expected level of corruption in a relatively standard model of business venturing, which the authors estimate using a cross section of the US states covering the period of 1986-2009.

Using a relatively standard model of business venturing that accounts for variation in predicted corruption levels, the authors find that entrepreneurs launch more businesses in states with higher predicted corruption.

To the knowledge, no one has previously tested the impact of expected corruption on entrepreneurial activity.

This chapter analyzes how patterns of political corruption across Latin America influence regional entrepreneurial activity as well as the effectiveness of different solutions that have been proposed to promote entrepreneurial initiatives. For this purpose, the causes of this institutional failure and its influence on the regional entrepreneurial system will be explored under a literature review. This review is used to identify its main issues to propose an analytical framework, based on game theory and social network analysis, to understand the dynamics of the different players involved in the interaction between the corrupt political contexts and the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. This framework is extended to further analyze several well-known regional corrupt business cases and the suitability of different solutions to revert this failure to foster entrepreneurial initiatives with a positive developmental impact in the region.

Using state-level data on productive and unproductive entrepreneurship, shadow economy size, and public official corruption, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether formal sector productive (unproductive) entrepreneurial activity is associated with lower (higher) levels of informal economic activity.

Additionally, the author aims to connect US state-level entrepreneurship, shadow economy size, and corruption by asking whether corruption affects entrepreneurial outcomes primarily through its effects on the shadow economy. The author contends that if this is the case, then estimates of corruption should serve as a good instrument for shadow economy size in regressions on formal sector entrepreneurial outcomes.

Results from OLS regressions suggest that shadow economy size shares a strong, negative (positive), and statistically significant relationship with productive (unproductive) entrepreneurship. These results are fairly robust to GMM estimation. Additionally, the author finds that corruption is a strong instrument for shadow economy size; one for which validity cannot be rejected in regressions on productive, and net entrepreneurship scores.

However, the author cannot safely assert that the author finds evidence of the shadow economy serving as a primary channel through which corruption affects observed entrepreneurial outcomes. Failure to reject validity of the corruption instrument is, at best, suggestive of the primacy of the entrepreneurial choice between formal and informal sector participation.

This study, to the author’s knowledge, is the first to attempt “connecting the dots” between entrepreneurship, corruption, and shadow economy size.

Informal entrepreneurship is seen as a direct outcome of either the failure of formal institutions or the asymmetry between formal and informal institutions. These two viewpoints are so far debated as alternative theoretical explanations for the prevalence of informal entrepreneurship. In this paper, the authors offer a theoretically integrative approach to further advance the institutional perspective of informal entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

Using face-to-face surveys of 322 street entrepreneurs from Lahore, Pakistan, the authors deploy the hitherto unused partial least square approach (PLS) to structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze data within the field of informal entrepreneurship.

The empirical findings strongly support the theoretical propositions of the new institutional perspective that the authors present in their paper. The authors find no direct impact of factors like procedural justice, redistributive justice and public sector corruption (i.e. formal institutional failings) on the formalization intentions of street entrepreneurs. Their findings demonstrate that the relationship between formal institutional failings and formalization intentions can only be explained through the mediating role of institutional asymmetry (i.e. tax morality).

From a policy perspective, the authors find that if they can encourage street entrepreneurs to obtain a local-level registration as the first step toward formalization, it will significantly increase their chances to opt for higher national-level registrations.

This paper presents a unique attempt to further understand the context of street entrepreneurship through the theoretical lens of the institutional theory. In doing so, it synthesizes the arguments of existing institutional perspectives and further develops the institutional theory of informal entrepreneurship. Moreover, the paper develops the concept of “formalization intentions”.

This paper aims to better understand the conditions that can lead to high and low opportunity entrepreneurship in countries with oil rents. Additionally, the study aims to find out the differences between countries with oil rents and countries without oil rents.

A configurational analysis based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was performed for a sample of 46 countries with oil rents and a sample of 20 countries without oil rents, using Country data from the World Bank World Development Indicators, World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

The results show that control of corruption is important to achieve high levels of opportunity entrepreneurship in countries with oil rents and countries without oil rents alike. It is highlighted that the abundance of oil resources in a given country is not a curse, if some conditions are met. Multiple configurations that lead to high levels of opportunity entrepreneurship in countries with oil rents are presented. The study shows that none of the antecedent conditions is necessary per se, it is the combination of conditions that leads to the outcome of interest. The study indicates that either high control of corruption or low taxes should occur, no matter the combination of conditions, to achieve high levels of opportunity entrepreneurship.

The relation between control of corruption and entrepreneurship is complex and, in spite of the insights that were gathered herein, much is still to be explored. The coverage rate of the solutions shows that there are countries with high levels of opportunity entrepreneurship that do not fit in any of the obtained configurations. The sample size is also a limitation. Furthermore, to compute the set membership thresholds, the anchors were based on the percentiles, given the lack of theoretical basis to do so. Thus, other methods should also be used in the future, if possible with a larger data sample.

The obtained results have implications for policy makers, authorities and potential entrepreneurs. In countries that are oil producers, policy makers aiming to promote opportunity entrepreneurship should take into account that it is the combination of conditions that is important, and not each condition by itself. They should consider that several solutions are possible. Authorities aiming to promote anti-corruption reforms, can leverage the findings of this study to demand for more resources to institute practices and structures to better control corruption, and should articulate among themselves the actions to carry on to improve the level of opportunity entrepreneurship in their country. Potential entrepreneurs can use the findings of this study to ask for anticorruption reforms and tax reforms, and they should use their entrepreneurial talent to try to speed up the change.

By overlapping streams of research in entrepreneurship, institutions and oil curse, this study makes several contributions to the entrepreneurship literature. Different from extant literature, the study uses a configurational approach and identifies the combinations of conditions that lead to high and low opportunity entrepreneurship in countries with oil rents. The non-linearity of the configurations is highlighted. Furthermore, for the first time, the study includes a panel without oil rents in the analysis, which enabled a comparison with the other set of countries and provides new insights about the importance of control of corruption to achieve high levels of opportunity entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to apply complexity theory tenets to deepen understanding, explanation and prediction of how configurations of national cultures and need motivations influence national entrepreneurial and innovation behavior and nations’ quality-of-life (QOL). Also, the study examines whether or not high national ethical behavior is sufficient for indicating nations high in quality-of-life.

Applying core tenets of complexity theory, the study constructs asymmetric, case-based (nations), explanations and predictive models of cultures’ consequences (via Schwartz’s seven value dimensions) and implicit need motivations (via McClelland’s three need motivations) indicating national entrepreneur and innovation activities and subsequent national quality-of-life and ethical behavior. The study includes testing configurational models empirically for predictive accuracy. The empirical examination is for a set of data for 24 nations in Asia, Europe, North and South America and the South Pacific.

The findings confirm the usefulness of applying complexity theory to learn how culture and motivation configurations support versus have negative consequences on nations’ entrepreneurship, innovation and human well-being. Nurturing of entrepreneur activities supports the nurturing of enterprise innovation activity and their joint occurrence indicates nations achieving high quality-of-life. The findings advance the perspective that different sets of cultural value configurations indicate nations high versus low in entrepreneur and innovation activities.

High entrepreneur activities without high innovation activity are insufficient for achieving high national quality-of-life. Achieving high ethical behavior supports high quality-of-life.

This study is one of the first to apply complexity theory tenets in the field of entrepreneurship research. The study here advances the perspective that case-based asymmetric modeling of recipes is necessary to explain and predict entrepreneur activities and outcomes rather than examining whether variable relationships are statistically significant from zero.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of corruption in the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutional quality in a sample of 90 countries from all around the world.

The data were collected from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which developed a model where Corruption Perception Index as a proxy for corruption mediates the relationship between the variable rule of law as a proxy for institutional quality and opportunity entrepreneurship as a proxy for productive entrepreneurship. Correlation, Baron and Kenny approach (causal steps approach) and PROCESS Macro (normal test theory) developed by Hayes were used to find out the direct and indirect effects of institutional quality between corruption and entrepreneurship.

The bootstrap mediation results indicated that institutional quality was a significant predictor of corruption and corruption was a significant predictor of entrepreneurship. These findings support the mediation hypothesis. In addition, findings showed that there is a negative relation between corruption and productive entrepreneurship and a positive relation between institutional quality and productive entrepreneurship.

The current study only considered the single proxy for institutional quality, i.e. rule of law; therefore, some other proxies for institutional quality such as government effectiveness and doing business can be used for future studies. Moreover, the proposed model does not control for the country differences like GDP or development stages of countries.

The findings of this study indicate that the total association between institutional quality and entrepreneurship is not only direct but also that rule of law contributes to levels of entrepreneurship through reduced levels of corruption. As a result, countries with higher levels of rule of law tended to experience corruption at lower levels, which in turn contributed to the emergence of increased levels of entrepreneurship. Furthermore, these results may be beneficial for organizations fighting against corruption, because entrepreneurial activity can be add to the group of economical drivers constrained by corruption. It is also beneficial for policy makers who focus on promoting entrepreneurship, since one way to increase entrepreneurial activity is to lower the existing corruption level.

The results indicated that the direct effect of institutional quality on the entrepreneurship remained significant when controlling for corruption, thus suggesting partial mediation. In other words, corruption only mediates part of the effect of institutional quality on entrepreneurship, that is, the intervention (institutional quality) has some residual direct effect even after the mediator (corruption) was introduced into the model.

While common sense suggests that corruption will likely have a negative impact on the economy as it raises the cost of doing business, research on the topic showed inconsistent results (positive, negative and neutral). This paper aims to verify whether corruption has a “grease” or “sand” effect on the wheels of entrepreneurial rates and under which conditions corruption will have stronger or weaker effects.

Using institutional theory as the basis for the hypotheses, generalized least squares estimation is conducted to empirically examine the role of corruption and political discretion in entrepreneurship in a sample of 93 countries.

Countries with higher levels of corruption are associated with lower levels of firm creation. However, this negative effect of corruption is weaker when there are higher levels of political discretion.

This is the first evaluation of the moderating effect of political discretion on the negative impact of corruption on entrepreneurship.

The paper aims to analyse the interplay between formal and informal institutions' and their impact on entrepreneurship rates in emerging economies.

This study expands previous research in examining the moderating effect of control of corruption on the relationship between formal institutions and the development of the entrepreneurial activity. The study utilizes longitudinal analyses of a dataset from 41 emerging economies over 11 years (2006–2016).

Findings provided robust support for the study's hypotheses. The results suggested lower levels of corruption positively moderate the effects of a country's number of procedures and education and training on the rates of entrepreneurial activity, while negatively moderating the effects of firm-level technology absorption on the rates of entrepreneurial activity.

The study has considered only one particular aspect of high-growth entrepreneurship, which is newly registered firms with limited liability. Although newly registered firms are recognized as one of the critical drivers of entrepreneurial activity. Future research should seek to examine other aspects of growth-oriented entrepreneurship such as activities involving a high level of innovation, corporate entrepreneurship or technology developments.

This study advanced the existing theories in the field of entrepreneurship and institutional economics as it merged the two theories as a driving framework in the design of the study in the context of emerging economies.

The study tested a theoretical model by expanding the number of emerging economies in the study and found comparable findings that explain factors that may influence the likelihood of individuals entering entrepreneurship.

This article adds to the current literature as it highlights the importance of the interplay of formal and informal institutions in determining their impact on entrepreneurship rates in emerging economies. This is of particular importance to policy-makers, and the business world as the empirical results of this study show the benefits of control of corruption in boosting entrepreneurial rates in these economies, which strive for economic diversification in their developmental endeavours.