The 2014 Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index indicates that the United States is presently leading the world in encouraging entrepreneurs and fostering the development of their ventures.

Credit: freedigitalphotos.net
Credit: freedigitalphotos.net

The Index also took the historic step of comparing male and female entrepreneurs – an indicator of women’s increasing presence in the world of business ownership – by releasing a separate Gender GEDI. In doing so, they discovered that the United States also wins first prize for the number of women business owners it supports.

Researchers at the Imperial College Business School who put the Index together with experts from the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Pécs and George Mason University also found that American venture capitalists were the most likely to provide money to entrepreneurial ventures.

“To understand the true impact of entrepreneurship in the economy, you have to go from bean counting to looking at the country’s entrepreneurship ecosystem as a whole,” ICBS professor and study co-author Erkko Autio told Phys.org. “The U.S. excels because it is strong in so many areas that matter. Entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in the U.S. economy and as result policy initiatives are created to encourage entrepreneurial behavior.”

He continued: “This, coupled with the culture of determination and motivation, makes the U.S. a great place to be an entrepreneur.”

In the broader Index, Canada came in second behind America, with Australia taking third place internationally for entrepreneurship in general. In the Gender GEDI, however, it was revealed that Australia took the proverbial silver medal for female entrepreneurs, and Germany scored the bronze.

Researchers were intrigued by the differences they found when gender was added into the equation, noting that it was “of interest to compare how countries rank with respect to their Gender-GEDI ranking and their original Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index ranking, which does not differentiate between sex or include any gender-specific variables.”

They added: “Six countries are rated more highly with respect to high potential women’s entrepreneurial development than with respect to general entrepreneurial conditions, five countries’ ranks worsen and six countries’ relative ranks are similar for both.”

The main index involved an analysis of the vast majority of nations around the world. The Gender GEDI, however, is a pilot program that incorporated 17 countries in all (including France, Mexico, South Africa and Russia).

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