Abstract:

For increasing socio-economic development, entrepreneurship, business sophistication, and innovation are key drivers (Wennekers and Thurik 1999; Vyakarnam 2009; Klapper, Amit and Guillen, 2010), and they need a well-educated and skilled human capital (Nichter and Goldmark, 2009; Levie and Autio, 2008), so the quality of education system and the quality of management schools should be relevant issues for promoting and fostering them (Van der Sluis, Van Praag, and Vijverberg, 2005; Isaacs et al., 2007).

Our aim in this research is to explore the relationship among the quality of the education system, the quality of management schools, business sophistication, innovation, and entrepreneurship, globally considered. After that, and taking into account that there are relevant differences among countries in these variables, we use the first four variables in a cluster analysis for creating homogeneous country groups to explore this relationship. Finally, we repeat the analysis but taking into account whether the economies are factor-driven economies, efficiency-driven economies, or innovation-driven economies to test if stages of development are related to entrepreneurial activity (Acs, Desai, and Hessels, 2008).

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, GEI, GEDI, education, innovation, business sophistication.