Entrepreneurship has been connected to several socio-economic issues. However, despite the growing conjectures, the links with democracy have yet to be substantiated. By using a country-level panel dataset over the 1972–2010 period, we find evidence that democracy is conducive to entrepreneurship. We shed light on the intensity and multidimensionality of democracy by showing that the promotion of free social interchange and the direct involvement of civil society in political processes are two dimensions of democracy driving such effect. We additionally observe that entrepreneurship is sensitive to both contemporaneous and historical values of democracy. By providing the first systematic empirical evidence that entrepreneurship and democracy are directly connected, this study suggests to consider their ongoing concomitant retreats as two related phenomena.

创业与几个社会经济问题有关。然而，尽管猜测越来越多，但与民主的联系尚未得到证实。通过使用 1972 年至 2010 年期间的国家级面板数据集，我们发现了民主有利于创业的证据。我们通过表明促进自由社会交流和公民社会直接参与政治进程是推动这种影响的民主的两个方面，阐明了民主的强度和多维性。我们还观察到，企业家精神对民主的当代和历史价值都很敏感。通过提供第一个系统的经验证据表明企业家精神和民主直接相关，