The Absent Entrepreneur : Exploring the Role of the Entrepreneur in Economics

Abstract: Economics as an academic discipline has often found it difficult to formally model the Entrepreneur. As Baumol (1968) noted, “The theoretical firm is entrepreneurless—the prince of Denmark has been expunged from the discussion of Hamlet.”This dissertation first examines if the entrepreneur is still absent from economics and then seeks to apply the concept of the entrepreneur to some contemporary economic discussions. Finally, I examine a concept closely associated with entrepreneurship: Philanthropy.The first and second article examine the presence of the entrepreneur and the family firm in the current economic “canon” in economics PhD programs. We find that the entrepreneur remains scarce in economics, but that some recent included works attempt to model entrepreneurship. The family firm is entirely absent from the surveyed literature.The third article examines the impact of a major Swedish educational reform that lengthened mandatory education on self-employment outcomes. I find that reform participants are less likely to operate marginal businesses.The fourth article examines income inequality in the United States in relation to entrepreneurship. Using the “Supermanager” hypothesis of Thomas Piketty as a starting point, we argue that entrepreneurs and managers in closely held firms play an important role in rising income inequality.Finally, the fifth article examines the state of Swedish philanthropy, a field usually fueled by successful entrepreneurship. We examine the productivity of philanthropic funding of research relative to other R&D funding and conclude that the main predictor of publication and patent output appears to be overall funding, not funding structure.