SME and entrepreneurship policy makers who are confronted with economic crises take into account which policy is the first to be implemented as well as those that come. Hence, three questions are of concern here:
1. What policies are effective for entrepreneurship activity and how are they effective?
2. What effects of those policies differ corresponding to the different intensity of entrepreneurship activity?
3. Why was Asian entrepreneurship activity low from 1998 to 2004? This study aims to propose which variables of public policies have an effect on promoting start-up entrepreneurship. Therefore, the relationship between public policies and firm birth rate across 27 countries is examined using ordinary least squared regression analysis. This paper conducts this analysis using OECD annual data from 1998 to 2004.
75 independent variables were selected from following OECD databases: Finance, ; National Accounts, ; Labor, ; Demography and Population, ; Science, Technology and Patents, ; and Public Sector, Taxation and Market Regulation. Four equations are examined. Three equations capture the relationship between firm birth rate and each field concerning public policy, and one equation considers all fields. In order to obtain an overall picture with meaningful factors regressions were computed, and each time adding one variable was added each time to the baseline model. As a result, a complete multivariate model was formulated. Subsequently a `developed country` dummy was included in the model to observe the group effect of developed and developing countries.
It was that ‘Short-term interest rate’, ‘Public expenditure on startup incentives’ and ‘Institutional investor assets’ have strong positive effects on the variable of firm birth rate. Similarly, differences are shown between countries with high and low firm birth rate. In Eq. (2), which analyzes the relationship between firm birth rate and labor policies, ‘Public expenditure on labor market programs’ captures the difference between two groups. One explanation is that entrepreneurs in a country with a low firm birth rate take more risk compared to those in a country with a low firm birth rate. This is supported by the results of the ‘Self-employment ratio’. In a country with high firm birth rate, an increase in the ‘Self-employment ratio’ has an effect on the firm birth rate in country with higher birth rate, while this is not the case in countries with low firm birth rate. That is, entrepreneurs in countries with a low firm birth rate do not like intense market competition.
Similar to what was found in the literature on regarding tax policy, the ‘Top marginal personal income tax rate for employees’ and the ‘Central government corporate income tax rate’ have a negative effect on firm birth rate. However, if the ‘Corporate income tax rate on distributed profits’ is higher, firm birth rate becomes higher and, in contrast to the literature on personal tax rate, the ‘Net personal tax rate’ has a negative effect as well. The specific explanations estimated here are shown in Section 6.
Based on the results of this study, studies of the relationship between public policy and firm birth rate will find more specific and accurate explanations (Lagged or those policies that are more important in finance, labor, patent, and tax areas)
본 논문은 정책수립자가 통제할 수 있는 공공정책이 기업가정신 활동에 미치는 영향력을 연구한 논문이다. 공공정책은 크게 자본, 노동력, 세금 제도 세가지로 구분하여 각각이 기업가정신 활동에 미치는 영향과 그 크기를 분석하였다. OECD 통계 DB에서 1998년부터 2003년까지의 공공정책 데이터를 수집하였으며, 기업가정신 활동은 회사가 창업하는 정도로 측정하였다. 관계성을 분석하기 위해 회귀분석을 시행했으며, 나아가 기업가정신 활동이 활발한 나라와 그렇지 않은 나라 간의 영향력의 차이를 알아보기 위해 K-means Clustering과 회귀분석을 시행하였다. 또한, 1998년부터 2003년까지 아시아(한국과 일본)의 기업가정신 활동이 매우 낮으며, 유럽국가 중 동유럽 국가의 기업가정신이 매우 활발한 것을 발견하여 그 원인을 회귀분석 결과를 통해 분석하였다. 분석 결과 기업가정신 활동은 자본시장의 채널이 다양할수록 노동비용이 낮고 세금이 낮을수록 활발하다는 것을 확인했으며, 기업가정신 활동이 높은 국가의 기업가는 위험을 선호하고 반대로 낮은 국가의 기업가는 위험을 기피하는 성향을 확인했다. 또한, 1998년부터 2003년까지의 아시아와 동유럽의 기업가정신 활동의 차이가 본 연구 결과로서 충분히 설명할 수 있음을 증명했다. 데이터 수의 부족과 시대적 배경의 특이성이 한계점으로 지적되지만 본 논문을 통하여 추후 연구의 기반을 제시할 수 있으며, 정책수립자는 이를 통해 향후 정책방향의 근거를 마련할 수 있을 것이다.
