This paper distinguishes between formal and informal entrepreneurship. It theorises that each are influenced by very different combinations of macro-economic factors and strongly moderated by country income levels. Empirically, we show the ease of starting a business and high-quality governance, exert a powerful influence on formal, but not informal entrepreneurship. The latter is influenced by self-employment rates in low-income countries and by female labour force participation in high-income countries. Policy-makers seeking to improve economic welfare through enhancing entrepreneurship therefore have to choose the ‘type’ of entrepreneurship on which to focus and then select appropriate policies. By providing a novel grouping of these policies, we are able to assist them in making these choices.

本文区分了正式创业和非正式创业。它的理论是，每个因素都受到非常不同的宏观经济因素组合的影响，并受到国家收入水平的强烈调节。从经验上看，我们展示了创业的便利性和高质量的治理，对正式而非非正式的创业产生了强大的影响。后者受到低收入国家自雇率和高收入国家女性劳动力参与率的影响。因此，寻求通过增强创业精神来改善经济福利的政策制定者必须选择关注的创业“类型”，然后选择适当的政策。通过提供这些政策的新组合，我们能够帮助他们做出这些选择。