Working Paper No. 170. Entrepreneurship and Growth
Mueller, D.C. (2011). Entrepreneurship and Growth. Ratio Working Paper No. 170.
Mueller, D.C. (2011). Entrepreneurship and Growth. Ratio Working Paper No. 170.
In the year 2000 at a meeting in Lisbon, leaders of the European Union (EU) articulated a set of goals for the Union, which have come to be called the Lisbon Strategy or Lisbon Agenda. The agenda had three main goals: to promote growth through innovation, to create a learning economy, and to bring about social and environmental renewal. Exactly what the last goal implies is not clear, at least to me, but the intent and substance behind the first two certainly is. Research spending was to rise across the EU, university enrollments would rise with them, and a more friendly environment for innovation would be created as markets continued to be liberalized and integrated. The EU leaders meeting in Lisbon set the year 2010 as their goal for fulfilling this agenda. The year 2010 has come and gone. Today, growth rates in Europe are even lower than they were in 2000. Research and university budgets have been cut – sometimes drastically – across the EU. These developments are, of course, largely a response to the recent financial crisis and its impact on state finances. But the crisis would not have been nearly as severe as it has been, if EU countries had been well on their way to fulfilling the goals of the Lisbon Agenda when the crisis hit. The EU’s failure to come anywhere near meeting the goals set out in the year 2000 stems, I shall argue, to underlying structural factors and ideological perspectives, which constitute major obstacles to the kind of knowledge-based, innovative society that the EU leaders dreamed of in Lisbon more than a decade ago. This paper attempts to identify what these obstacles are.
Mueller, D.C.
2011
Ratio Working Paper
2023
Ratio.
Liberaliseringen av tjänster inom EU har tappat fart. Jämfört med den inre marknaden för varor har utvecklingen av handeln med tjänster hållits tillbaka av byråkrati och krångel, vilket resulterar i långsammare tillväxt, lägre sysselsättning och bristfällig konkurrenskraft. Hindren för handel med tjänster präglas av lika stor mångfald som tjänsterna själva.
Genom att kombinera olika index, presenterar denna rapport en övergripande bild av regleringsbaserade hinder. Enligt OECD-data finns det specifika sektorer (som juridiska, distributions- och järnvägsfrakttransporttjänster) där reformer skulle kunna genomföras till låg kostnad. Men byråkrati och administrativa hinder utmanar alla typer av företag inom EU. Mer än 90 procent av EU:s BNP kommer från länder som rankas lägre än 20 i Världsbankens Doing Business-bedömning från 2020. De över 5 700 reglerade yrkena inom EU är ett exempel på ett område i behov av reformer. Cirka 140 icke-sjukvårdsrelaterade yrken regleras endast i ett EU-land (som exempelvis blomsterhandlare i Luxemburg och vinprovare i Slovenien), vilket indikerar att regleringsbehovet är tämligen svagt eller obefintligt. Det finns också märkliga regionala skillnader i regleringen av yrken inom länder (särskilt i Belgien).
De många reglerade yrkena hindrar innebär ett sänke för potentialen i den inre marknaden och skulle kunna avvecklas helt eller harmoniseras med lite politisk vilja. Om endast yrken som är gemensamma för ett rimligt stort antal EU-länder vore föremål för reglering skulle listan över reglerade yrken kortas dramatiskt.
Den här rapporten drar slutsatsen att kostnaden för passivitet när det gäller liberalisering av den inre marknaden för tjänster är hög och riskerar skada EU:s konkurrenskraft.
2022
Questioning the Entrepreneurial State, 219.
This chapter investigates Chinese wind power development and concludes that innovation cannot be pushed by the efforts of many, and that when the state clarifies directions and objectives, these can be achieved but with severe and unexpected side effects. Two topics are explored: wind curtailment and low technological development, both examples of unproductive entrepreneurship induced by government policies. The goal of wind power capacity expansion leads to construction (i.e., generation capacity) but little electricity. Examples of failures include low grid connectivity with, some years averaging 15% of generation capacity broken or unconnected to the grid. A key lesson for Europe is that forced innovation often amounts to little and that the old saying holds up: “no plan survives contact with reality.”
The book can be downloaded here.
2021
Ratio Working Paper
The Covid-19 pandemic has made it clear that the labour market situation can change extremely rapidly when there is an unexpected exogenous shock to the economy. Even though the transformation of the labour market as a result of the development of ICT (Information Communication Technology) industries facilitates more-flexible conditions, it is now more important than ever for EU Member States to improve the
functioning of their labour markets. Member States need to increase possibilities for training and retraining throughout peoples’ working lives in order to smooth the transformation into a digital world of work.