Purpose

The purpose of this work is to explore what determines a country’s entrepreneurial environment attractiveness, by understanding how countries compare regarding their business environment and entrepreneurial opportunities and whether such aspects have changed over time.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a longitudinal country-level cluster analysis of business environments (years 2001 and 2016), this study captures changes in classification of both emerging and developed market economies throughout an attractiveness spectrum, from least to most attractive environments.

Findings

Interesting findings involve the difference in trajectories of emerging economies, such as India compared to the stagnation of Brazil, Argentina and South Korea in the 15-year period. The paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the attractiveness of the entrepreneurial environment beyond the simple notion of most and least economically developed countries by providing a framework for dynamic cross-country analysis of entrepreneurial environmental attractiveness that can be further explored, tested and expanded.

Research limitations/implications

Main limitations relate to the non-exhaustive sample of countries and variables. Contributions are both academic and managerial: helping to fill important research gaps in international entrepreneurship, namely, environmental conditions, cross-country comparisons (Coombs et al., 2009) and the understanding of elements of the investment climate (Stern, 2002); and assisting managers, entrepreneurs and policymakers understand what defines a country’s entrepreneurial environment attractiveness to better evaluate potential locations for investment.

Originality/value

The originality of the paper lies in using cluster analysis in a longitudinal study of country attractiveness, as well as in advancing the debate of country attractiveness, by adding a temporal dimension (from factors that are less structural to more conjunctural) and a comparative dimension in a new cross-country comparison framework of analysis.

中文翻译：

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创业环境吸引力：跨国纵向集群分析

目的

这项工作的目的是通过了解各国如何比较其商业环境和创业机会以及这些方面是否随着时间变化而探讨了决定一个国家的创业环境吸引力的因素。

设计/方法/方法

通过对国家/地区的商业环境进行纵向纵向集群分析（2001年和2016年），本研究涵盖了整个吸引力范围（从最小到最有吸引力的环境）的新兴市场经济体和发达市场经济体的分类变化。

发现

有趣的发现涉及新兴经济体（例如印度）与15年内巴西，阿根廷和韩国的停滞相比的差异。本文旨在通过提供一个可以对跨国企业环境吸引力进行动态跨国分析的框架，以进一步探讨，检验和扩展这一框架，从而为大多数国家和最不经济发达国家的简单概念之外的有关企业家环境吸引力的辩论做出贡献。

研究局限/意义

主要限制与国家和变量的非详尽样本有关。贡献既有学术方面的，也有管理方面的：有助于填补国际创业中的重要研究空白，即环境条件，跨国比较（Coombs等，2009）和对投资环境要素的理解（Stern，2002）；并帮助管理人员，企业家和决策者了解什么定义了一个国家的企业环境吸引力，以便更好地评估潜在的投资地点。

创意/价值

本文的独创性在于在对国家吸引力的纵向研究中使用聚类分析，以及通过增加时间维度（从结构性较弱的要素到合情性的因素）和比较维度来推动对国家吸引力的争论。一个新的跨国比较分析框架。