Overcoming Barriers to Entrepreneurship in the United States

Overcoming Barriers to Entrepreneurship compiles academic discussions of real and perceived barriers to the founding and running of small businesses in America. Each chapter illustrates how policy and economic environment can hinder business owners, and suggests what can be done to help them. Starting with venture capital access in Silicon Valley during the Internet bubble, the book goes on to question the link between personal wealth and entrepreneurship, to investigate how federal tax rates effect small-business creation and destruction, to explain the low rate of self-employment among Mexican immigrants, and to suggest how pension coverage can be increased in small businesses. Concluding with an attempt to qualify what makes an entrepreneur, Overcoming Barriers to Entrepreneurship argues that policymakers need not create incentives for entrepreneurs to create new businesses, though there is a great deal they can do to encourage entrepreneurs by removing legal and economic roadblocks to business creation.

Overcoming Barriers brings high-level analysis to entrepreneurship....The seven essays are well organized and nicely edited., The economic and social factors under which entrepreneurship thrives has been a neglected topic when compared to its economic importance as a contributor to growth, partly because it can be challenging to measure and isolate causal factors. This book is exceptional both for the quality of its empirical work, which does an excellent job identifying and measuring the relative importance of various causal factors (access to external funding, family wealth, the effects of taxes, and language or cultural barriers that explain the low levels of entrepreneurship among some minorities) and the variety of thoughtful perspectives brought to bear on the topic. The conclusions offer relevant and clear implications for policymakers interested in boosting entrepreneurship.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is senior fellow and director of the Center for Employment Policy at the Hudson Institute.