Autoempleo y desarrollo económicoglobalización, libertad económica e innovación

Resum

The interplay between entrepreneurship and globalization and economic freedom backs into at the heart of the debate about self-employment contributions to the economic development of modem economies. After experienced a process of exceptionally strong globalization, the world is witnessing to an upsurge of protectionism. This new trend is threating not only free trade agreements but also the levels of economic integration achieved in some economic areas like the European Union. In this framework the less competitive firms and unemployed with low employability, are groups that will treat to lobby and to vote political options that incorporate the concerns of these groups (i.e. protectionist actions like less trade openness and restrictive migration policies. The consequences of this process are a hot policy issue at the time of writing after the great recession, since some industries and large sectors of the population considers globalisation as the ultimate cause of their problems, and advocate by any return to protection for national business and domestic employees against foreign firms and migrant workers. For them, the expected promotion of efficiency and productivity associated to globalisation is not guaranteed if the differences between institutions across countries alter the relative productivity and competitiveness. Thus, one could argue that the entrepreneurship ecosystem i.e. the institutional framework for business is the main determinant of the capacity of contribution of entrepreneurship to economic growth, job creation and innovation. Therefore, the economic freedom in its different dimensions, such as the rule of law, the regulatory efficiency and in especial business freedom and labor market institutions, the degree of integration into the global economy -i.e. the openness to trade- and the weight of the public sector on the overall economy might be considered as key factors, for determining whether a society is an entrepreneurial one or not The only way to resolve this type of controversies is providing solid economic propositions and empirical findings in order to evaluate the globalisation impact on economic growth, innovation, job creation and entrepreneurship. In this context, the study of the relationship between economic integration and entrepreneurship is particularly interesting, since entrepreneurship is a determinant of economic growth and job creation. In principle, the relationship between globalization, economic freedom and entrepreneurship is ambiguous, since one can argue that we can find plausible explanations for expecting both a positive and a negative relationship. Starting with the relation between entrepreneurship and economic integration, we all agree in that economic integration opens new business opportunities and encourages the self-employed firm size, since sales to foreign markets expands the potential demand. From this perspective, more trade openness is a positive factor not only for fostering entrepreneurship but also for enhancing the probability of survival and success. On the other hand, globalization increases the intensity of competition the opportunities of jobs and wages in the export sector leading a raise in the number self-employed workers due to the confluence of two phenomena: i) as global competition continuous to intensify some of them, the less competitive ones, could not withstand this competition, thus triggering the shutdown; ii) the greater the exposure to foreign competition, the smaller the fraction of self-employed people as the Diez and Ozdagli’s (2011) model suggest. In addition we should also consider whether more openness influences on the relative distribution of entrepreneurship between productive and unproductive activities, i.e. between the so-called formal and informal self-employment. However, the key question is to know whether the effect of a higher exposure to international trade, leads, in any case, an optimal reallocation of labour between paid-employment and self-employment and between less productive firms to more productive exporters, and even across countries with positive effects on economic growth, innovation and job creation. Thus, the challenge is to provide empirical findings in order to shed light to the debate and attitudes towards globalization. To this end it is important to know the effects of more trade openness on the export intensity of self- employment is mutually beneficial, not only for higher-income countries but also for lower-income countries. In order to address these questions this dissertation also includes a second research question. In particular it presents an inquiry about the reasons of why the effects of globalization on national self-employed sectors should be analyzed not only in quantitative terms but also in qualitative ones. In particular we will treat to provide empirical findings for supporting the theoretical view of the effects of globalization on national entrepreneurial systems, provided by Acd and Sanders (2007). For them, globalization does not destroy self-employment but encourage the entrepreneurial model of production (Acs and Sanders, 2007. The shift away from large corporations and towards smaller entrepreneurial activity (Acs and Audretsch, 1993; van Stel, 2006) with the associated reduction in the average self-employed firm size, as well as the new business opportunities in the service sector for entrepreneurship thanks to the improvements in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are the two potential factors behind this surprising performance of the self-employment rate. Audretsch and Sanders (2007) reinforce this idea suggesting that globalization and the development of the ICT sector are leading a new international division of work, the advanced economies endowed with high skilled workers are specialized in early stages of the product life cycle introducing innovations in products or process, while the less developed economies endowed with low skilled workers are specialized in the off-shored production stage. In sum, this dissertation will treat to analyse the triangle entrepreneurship, globalization economic freedom, for providing a better understanding how and why the contribution of a national self-employed sector on economic growth, innovation and job creation can show different intensities.