Environment and entrepreneurial activity: A system dynamics approach [Entorno y actividad emprendedora: Un enfoque de dinámica de sistemas]

Abstract

In the recent decades the role of new firms has been recognized as one of the key elements for economic and social development. While governments dedicated their efforts to design polices and strategies for the support of the entrepreneurial activity, the academy has focused its interest, among other topics, on the analysis of conditioning factors to entrepreneurship. Concretely, scholars from Babson College (USA) and London Business School (United Kingdom) launched in 1999 the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) with the aim to analyze the level of entrepreneurial activity around the world. Specifically, this Project studies the variation of entrepreneurship over time, the differences among the countries, the entrepreneurship support policies and the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and economic development. The GEM Project is based on a theoretical model characterized for the holistic vision of the entrepreneurial activity and the interdependence among the variables. The complexity of this model highlights some limitations of the econometric instruments. Consequently, taking into account that one of the main objectives of the GEM Project is to propose and formulate support policies to new firm creation, system dynamics is considered an adequate tool for this aim. In this context, the paper evaluates, through system dynamics, policies and strategies to support entrepreneurial activity, according the GEM theoretical model. The causal model is presented with the results of the study.