Experence of Entrepreneur and the Global Entrepreneurion Project

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1 THE GEM RESEARCH: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES Claudia Álvarez Departamento de Economía de la Empresa Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona Edifici B Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallés) - Barcelona Tel / Fax David Urbano david.urbano@uab.es Departamento de Economía de la Empresa Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona Edifici B Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallés) - Barcelona Tel / Fax José Ernesto Amorós eamoros@udd.cl School of Business and Economics Univesridad del Desarrollo Av. Plaza 700, Las Condes. Santiago, Chile. Tel 56(2) / Fax

2 THE GEM RESEARCH: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the content and the evolution of research based on the GEM Project (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor). With this aim, we conducted a rigorous search of the published articles in journals included in the Thomson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index, through an exploratory analysis focused in the articles that have used GEM data. The main findings of the study show that the institutional approach is the most commonly used conceptual framework. Also, although there are still few academic publications using GEM data, the number of articles is increasing in terms of opportunities for future research lines. Key Words: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), literature review, institutional approach, SSCI. JEL Classification: L26, B25, M13, O57 1. INTRODUCTION Given the need for endogenous development strategies for countries and regions, entrepreneurship emerges as one of the main mechanisms for social and economic growth (Audretsch and Keilbach 2004, Wennekers et al and 2005, van Stel et al. 2005). As a result, there is a growing interest in the different public and private initiatives to promote entrepreneurial activity, as well as in the academic community for further analysis of this phenomenon. Seeking to provide internationally comparable data on entrepreneurial activity (Reynolds et al. 1999, Reynolds et al. 2005), researchers at Babson College (USA) and London Business School (UK) created in 1999 the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), The purpose of GEM project was to use empirical data to assess the level of entrepreneurial activity across 2

3 countries, to understand how entrepreneurial activity varies over time, and to understand why some countries are more entrepreneurial than other. In addition to that, GEM researchers sought to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth and identify which public policies boost entrepreneurship. Between 1999 and 2009, approximately one million people have been surveyed and eleven thousand experts interviewed in association with GEM project 1. The number of academic papers that use the GEM database is growing. Despite the growing numbers of people using and collaborating with the GEM project, few systematic reviews of GEM based research was found on the literature published on the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Considering the incremental scientific research using GEM data set, it is important to provide an overview of research using GEM data and systematize finding in search of future research needs. This paper aim to explore the content and evolution of research based on the GEM project, identifying topics, unit of analysis, and statistical techniques, as well as the authors and articles with greater impact. A search of SSCI articles that used GEM data was conducted and analyzed using the Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2. This work is aligned with the research of Acs et al. (2009), Alvarez and Urbano (2010) Amorós, Bosma and Levie (2010) and Urbano et al. (2010) who have analyzed the relevant scientific articles that use GEM databases to produce knowledge. The structure of this article is as follow: first, a conceptual framework for the analysis of published research on the GEM is presented. Second, we describe the methodology used to analyze the research and present the results of this study. Finally, highlight achievements and challenges for GEM research. 1. GEM Project has the adult population survey and expert interviews, as primary sources of data collection (in addition to primary information on macroeconomic variables and other similar). Until 2009 there had been 1,038,746 adult surveys and 11,160 expert interviews. 2 Both SCCI and JRC are part of Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge SM (formerly ISI Web of Knowledge) that is an unified research platform for find, analyze, and share information in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. More information at: 3

4 2. GENERAL FRAMEWORK: INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH AND NEW VENTURES CREATION. From a general perspective, the research in the field of entrepreneurship 3 has been placed under three broad approaches: (a) The economic approach, where researchers emphasize aspects of economic rationality and, broadly argue that new venture creation is due mainly to economic issues (Audretsch and Thurik 2001, Audretsch and Keilbach 2004, Parker 2004; Wennekers et al. 2005, among others). (b)the psychological approach posits that individual factors or psychological traits determine entrepreneurial activity (McClelland 1961, Collins et al. 1964; Carsrud and Johnson 1989, among others). (c) The sociological and institutional approach argues that the socio-cultural environment determines the decision to start a business (Shapero and Sokol 1982, Aldrich and Zimmer 1986, Berger 1991, Busenitz et al. 2000; Steyaert and Katz 2004; Manolova et al. 2008; among others). This paper takes these approaches putting focus on sociological approach as first analysis criterion. Specifically, we consider the Institutional Economic Theory (North 1990 and 2005) applied to the analysis of new business creation (Diaz et al. 2005; Urbano 2006; Veciana and Urbano 2008). In this context, institutional factors are the driver-conditions for entrepreneurship, distinguishing between formal factors (public agencies and policies to support business start-ups, procedures and costs to start a business, etc.) and informal factors (entrepreneurs networks, entrepreneurship role-models, attitudes toward entrepreneurship, etc.). To compare the results with the institutional approach, we will also consider the economic approach. In the specific area of entrepreneurship and environmental factors, Gnyawali and Fogel (1994) consider five dimensions that influence entrepreneurial activity: a) government policies and 3 While entrepreneurship as a discipline is a relative new field several authors have made significant theoretical and empirical contributions in recent decades being only some of them Gartner 1985; Brockhaus 1987; Johannisson 1988; Bygrave y Hofer 1991; Gnyawali y Fogel 1994; Shane y Venkataraman 2000; Verheul et al. 2001; Busenitz et al. 2003; Davidsson 2003; Steyaert y Hjorth 2006 and others. 4

5 procedures, b) social and economic environment, c) knowledge and entrepreneurial skills, d) financial assistance for new ventures 4, e) non-financial assistance. Governmental policies and procedures are governmental actions that can influence some market mechanisms. These can help the market to work more efficiently by removing market imperfections and rigid administrative regulations. Social conditions, they can be defined as social attitudes conducive to entrepreneurial activity, such as the presence of experienced entrepreneurs and successful role models. The economic conditions are related to the proportion of small businesses and their dynamism, economic growth and diversity of economic activities. Knowledge and entrepreneurial skills are the skills needed to start a new company. These skills are acquired through training and education, and may focus on skill improvement about business plan development, or about business management in general. Entrepreneurs also require both financial (funding to launch their business, diversify the risk for start, growth and expansion), and non-financial assistance (support for market research, prepare the business plan, contacts and networks with other entrepreneurs, etc.). If North s (1990, 2005) Institutional Economic Theory and Gnyawali and Fogel s (1994) theory is intertwined (see Figure 1), we can see that government policies and procedures, knowledge and entrepreneurial skills, and financial and no financial assistance are related to formal factors, while social conditions relate to the informal factors. Similarly, economic conditions can be addressed within the economic approach to business creation. [Insert Figure 1] 3. METHODOLOGY In literature reviews, defining the criteria for selecting the articles that will be analyzed is a challenge, however, the use of SSCI for sampling has gained consensus recently. The SSCI standard also makes it possible to analyze the impact factor of related articles using JCR 5. 4.Although Fogel and Gnyawali (1994) provide the social and economic conditions together, in this work have been considered separately in order to adapt the conceptual framework used. 5 This approach has been used by authors like Davidsson and Wiklund (2001), Dean et al. (2007), van Praag and Versloot (2007) and Brush et al. (2008) among other. 5

6 Following this criterion, we conducted a search of articles using SSCI Web of Knowledge tool and look for the fields of title, abstract and text of the article following these key words: GEM, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, GEM and Entrepreneurship, GEM data. Our first round includes the highest impact index in Business, according to JCR (Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly), but no items were found that use the GEM database. We also searched specially entrepreneurship and small business management journals (Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Small Business Management, and Small Business Economics 6 ). There were 48 articles on journals related to Entrepreneurship, but there were no articles in the Journal of Small Business Management. Finally, we made an extensive search throughout the SSCI restricting the search to the areas of economics, business and the other topics related to business management and found other 21 articles that met the selection criteria described above. From the results we select the articles that use GEM data in the empirical section either by drawing on the GEM s database directly, or on reports published by the GEM Global, national or regional teams. We included articles that present the methodology of the GEM, and introductions to special issues related to scientific research using data from GEM. Likewise, we dismissed some works that only use GEM data to compare results with other investigations or to contextualize some frameworks, but did not use GEM data to construct empirical variables. This gave a total of 69 articles of which 62 are strictly empirical, 4 are introductions to special issues dedicated to the GEM project and 3 on methodological issues and descriptive of GEM project. After the selection process we proceeded with an exploratory study of the research topic, theoretical or empirical, and the different methodologies used (level of analysis, statistical techniques, data source used). In addition, we identified the impact of these articles with the 6 The impact factor according JCR 2009 is the next: Academy of Management Review (7.867), Academy of Management Journal (6.483), Strategic Management Journal (4.464), Administrative Science Quarterly (3.842), Journal of Business Venturing (2.260), Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice (1.704), Small Business Economics (1.380), International Small Business Journal (1.347), Journal of Small Business Management (1.088), Entrepreneurship & Regional Development (1.020). 6

7 number of citations in the SSCI, the number of authors per article, the authors highlights and the most active in publishing. Finally we did a correspondence analysis to describe the relationship between two nominal variables (economic approach / institutional vs. journal, level of analysis and statistical technique). Correspondence analysis has similarity with contingency tables, and also provides measures and tests of association, but the tables cannot plot any relationship between variables, as it does correspondence analysis. 4. RESULTS: THE ACADEMIC RESEARCH AT GEM PROJECT 4.1 Qualitative analysis As stated above, this paper takes as conceptual framework the institutional approach. Specifically, we classified the articles according to the environmental factors proposed by Gnyawali and Fogel (1994), and adapted to North s (1990, 2005) institutional approach (see Figure 2). Table 1 shows the subject classification, excluding the theoretical articles and those dedicated to methodological aspects. [Insert Figure 2] Table 1 shows that most empirical work are related to social conditions (44%), followed by economic conditions with 29% on entrepreneurship financial and non-financial assistance (11%), government policies and procedures (8%), formal and informal institutional factors (5%) and finally, knowledge and entrepreneurial skills (3%) 7. [Insert Table 1] 7 Considering the strict definition of knowledge and entrepreneurial skills given by Gnyawali and Fogel (1994), few items that can be classified in this dimension, because although many studies consider the perceptions of entrepreneurial skills, these authors included in this dimension formal aspects of education and training, while the perceptual aspects were included in social conditions. 7

8 With regard to social conditions, 44% are works directly related to the role of institutions, such as Aidis et al. (2008) that explore how institutions and networks have influenced the (under)development of entrepreneurship in Russia. Anokhin and Schulze (2008) argue that corruption undermines confidence in the institutions required to develop entrepreneurial and innovative new business. Kwon and Arenius (2010) examine the effects of social capital on the perception of entrepreneurial opportunities. Pinillos and Reyes (2009) analyzed the relationship between cultural dimension (individualist-collectivist orientation) and entrepreneurial activity. Tominc and Rebernik (2007) explain the factors that influence entrepreneurial activities in post-socialist countries. Vaillant and Lafuente (2007) evaluated the impact of different institutional environments on rural vs. urban entrepreneurship. Other examples like Bjørnskov and Foss (2008) relates institutional indicators of economic freedom and entrepreneurial activities, while De Clercq et al. (2010) discuss the propensity of international start-ups businesses and their relationship with the institutional environment. Other authors like Arenius and Minniti (2005) investigate variables related to the individual decision to be an entrepreneur, using socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, education), economic (household income, employment status) and perception variables (opportunities recognition, fear of failure, entrepreneurial skils and abilities.). Using perception variables, Arenius and De Clercq (2005) argue that entrepreneurship is conditioned by the opportunities perception that also depends on the entrepreneur's social networks. Finally Koelling (2008) uses perception variables of to explain the degree of innovation entrepreneurs. The results of the previous articles have been used in other line that examines variables related to the decision to be an entrepreneur in specific groups like women entrepreneurs and ethnic entrepreneurs. On women entrepreneurs, Rebernik and Tominc (2004) analyzed the differences between female and male entrepreneurs in Croatia and Slovenia; Arenius and Kovalainen (2006) explore women's preferences for self-employment in the Nordic Countries, Baughn et al. (2006) evaluated the impact of specific norms supporting women entrepreneurs and Verheul et al. (2006) find that entrepreneurial activity rates of men and women are influenced by the same factors and in the same direction, but some of them have a differential impact on women. Also, Minniti and Nardone (2007) suggest that perceptual variables explain the gender differences regarding the decision to start a business and these differences are universal and are 8

9 not conditioned by socioeconomic circumstances and context. Langowitz and Minniti (2007) also show that the perception variables are determinants of entrepreneurial activity by gender, but women have less favorable perceptions about themselves and the environment. Wagner (2007) investigates which variables are related to gender differences in entrepreneurship, emphasizing the fear of failure (which is higher in women) as the main reason for not starting a new business. Thompson et al. (2009) explore the characteristics of self-employed women who manage their home-based businesses. On the ethnic entrepreneurs, Koelling and Minniti (2006) study the variables related to rates of entrepreneurship in black and white Americans, while Levie (2007) assesses the effect of ethnic origin on the propensity to be entrepreneur in the United Kingdom. In the dimension related to economic conditions (29%) we found several authors who analyzed the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth, one of the main objectives of the GEM project. For example, van Stel et al. (2005) and Wong et al. (2005) show the influence of entrepreneurship on economic growth, finding that this relationship depends more on countries total per-capita income that national levels of innovation. Wennekers et al. (2005), using an econometric model, determine a U-curve relationship between economic development and the rate of start-ups. Valliere and Peterson (2009) present an extension of the economic growth model developed by Wong et al. (2005), which reflects differences in the economic effects of entrepreneurship by opportunity and necessity, both in emerging countries as in developed ones. Acs and Amorós (2008) and Larroulet and Couyomdjian (2009) studied the relationship between entrepreneurship, competitiveness and economic growth with emphasis on Latin America. Frederick and Monsen (2009) explain why New Zealand only exhibits a moderate level of economic development despite its high level of entrepreneurship actitity. Acs and Varga (2005) identify the relationship between variations in entrepreneurial activity of countries and the spatial structure of economies with the dissemination of knowledge, and economic growth. Bosma and Schutjens (2007) analyze entrepreneurship in different regions of Europe, Rocha and Sternberg (2005) explore the impact of clusters and agglomerations on new business creation in the Germany regions. Similarly, Acs et al. (2007) conducted a study comparing Ireland and Hungary, and found significant differences in terms of entrepreneurial activity and level of development, while Hessels et al. (2008) analyzed whether socioeconomic variables can explain the impact of entrepreneurial motivations. 9

10 Hessels and van Stel (2009) analyze the relationship between new business and country economic growth rate, taking into account the guidance international-oriented new ventures. Other economic conditions studied are the size of the regional economy (Naude et al. 2008) and FDI (De Clercq et al. 2008). The authors that analyzed government policies and procedures (8%) have focused on the relationship between regulation and entrepreneurial activity, studying aspects such as enty regulation and labor regulation (van Stel et al. 2007), working time and legal practices (Stephen et al. 2009), costs to start a business (Ho and Wong 2007) and the degree of economic freedom (McMullen et al. 2008). Some of results of this type of research indicate that the regulation affected differently the opportunity versus necessity-based entrepreneurship (Ho and Wong 2007, van Stel et al. 2007, McMullen et al. 2008). Finally, Du and Vertinsky (2009) focus on the relationship between ownership structure and legal system of countries. Issues related to financial assistance (11%) have been studied by authors like Maula et al. (2005) and Szerb et al. (2007), focusing on the determinants of informal investment and demographic and perceptual variables (age, gender, education, entrepreneurial skills and abilities, household income, employment status, perception of opportunities, fear of failure, networks). Szerb et al. (2007) put focus on specific countries such as Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia. Roper and Scott (2009) analyzed the impact of gender on the perceptions about difficulties to accessing funding and the decision to start a new business. The results show that women preceive more financial barriers than men and that in turn negatively affects the perception of their intentions to be entrepreneurs. Amorós et al. (2008) analyzed the case of formal and informal new venture finance in Chile based on business angels data and official statistics of Chile. Finally Levie and Lerner (2009) compare between family and nonfamily businesses in the UK regard their financial and human resources. With regard to knowledge and entrepreneurial skills (3%), De Clercq and Arenius (2006) related knowledge (as a result of formal education) and have knowledge of other entrepreneurs, with the probability of starting a new business. Levie and Autio (2008) show the impact of formal education and entrepreneurship training in entrepreneurial activity. If we relate Gnyawali and Fogel (1994) work with the approach of North (1990 and 2005), our analysis shows that informal factors (social conditions) and formal factors (policies and 10

11 procedures of governance, financial assistance and non-financial, knowledge and entrepreneurial skills) are the main grounded frameworks on the considered papers (69%), while only 31% of the studies are based on the strictly economic approach. Thus, at least based on these preliminary results, it appears that there is some preponderance in the analysis of environmental factors, a fact that confirms the trend that is taking place in recent years in the entrepreneurship literature. With regard to non-empirical articles, three methodological articles were found (Acs et al. 2008b, Reynolds et al. 2005, Reynolds 2008) and four introductions to special issues (Acs et al. 2008a; Acs and Amorós 2008a; Acs and Szerb 2007; Sternberg and Wennekers 2005). On the methodological ones, Reynolds et al. (2005) presented and described the conceptual model of GEM, its features and implementation from 1998 to Acs et al. (2008b) compare GEM data with information about entrepreneurship from the World Bank (World Bank Group Entrepreneurship SurveyWBGES). Finally, Reynolds (2008) analyzes the impact of changes in the formulation of survey questions to the adult population either in the same language or in different languages over time, and the rates of entrepreneurial activity in the United States. The results show that the rates of new entrepreneurs remain constant between 1998 and As a conclusion based on these works we can said that although the GEM s methodology has been working since the onset of the project including several improvements that have been made year-by year and reported in the various Global Reports (see Bosma and Levie, 2010), there are few academic papers on the methodological aspects of GEM model and GEM methodology. Related to introductions to special issues dedicated to GEM, three correspond to the journal Small Business Economics. The first focuses on the variation in entrepreneurial activity in developed countries (Sternberg and Wennekers 2005). The second describes the advances on the relationship between entrepreneurial activities, economic growth and public policies, including developed and transition countries (Acs and Szerb 2007), while the third examines the relationship between levels of economic development and entrepreneurship activity including developed, transition and developing countries (Acs et al. 2008a). The other special issue is for the Chilean Journals Estudios de Economía where Acs and Amorós (2008a) repeats the development of entrepreneurship and link stages of economic development of countries with different characteristics of entrepreneurial activities in developed and emerging countries. 11

12 Both Acs et al. (2008a) and Acs and Amorós (2008a) emphasize that there is not much progress as far as theoretical studies related to the GEM, probably due to the relative initial phase of the life cycle of the GEM project (relative to the production of an academic outputs). These arguments suggest that as GEM matures, there will be more publications in high-impact journals, including literature reviews and articles related to the extensions of the GEM model Quantitative analysis As mentioned earlier in the methodology, there were no articles in major journals in the area of Business according to the JCR impact factor. This might be considered an important opportunity for research and also a future indicator of consolidation of GEM based research. No doubt the journal that has a key role on the drive of GEM-based research is Small Business Economics, with 51% of the articles, followed with 6% in International Small Business Journal, 6% in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 4% in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 4% Journal of Business Venturing and 3% European Planning Studies. 19% are split between several journals. A particular case is Estudios de Economía that has 7% of the articles, but it continued a special issue related to GEM topics and so future publications might not be recurring. It is interesting to note that none article using the GEM dataset were found in the Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM), even though it had an impact factor of in 2009 which is considered high. In adition to that, JSBM focuses on small business management and entrepreneurship. The results indicate that the special issues published on Small Business Economics determine the number of articles per year. However, considering that the largest number of articles (19) is in 2008, this indicates a growing trend in using GEM data even without special issues. Importantly, although the GEM Project began in 1999, the first articles on JCR were in 2004 in 8 For information about GEM model evolution see the GEM Global Report 2008 (Bosma et al. 2009). 12

13 Small Business Economics, European Planning Studies and Drustvena Istrazivanja (see Table 2). [Insert Table 2] Depending on the level of analysis, based on the criteria stated by Sternberg and Wennekers (2005), the articles were classified as micro if empirical work made use of individual data from the GEM database, meso if he was referring to regions and macro when it came to data related to whole countries. The results indicate that the work has focused on the analysis of entrepreneurial activity from a micro perspective (45%) and macro (45%), while only 10% at the regional level (see Table 3). [Insert Table 3] As expected by the level of analysis (micro) and the nature of the GEM data (binary responses, 1/0), the statistical techniques used in empirical works are logit models, probit, tobit with 40%, you followed by multiple linear regression analysis associated with the macro level, with 35% panel data (11%) and other techniques (13%) (see Table 4). There were no items that make use of qualitative methods, an aspect which can also point to emerging future research. [Insert Table 4] Related to the unit of analysis, it is possible to identify several types of dependent variables. Most of the articles (72%), both at micro and macro, make use of dependent variables related to entrepreneurial activity. They were followed by studies that use dependent variables related to economic issues, especially growth and economic development (10%) and the works that attempt to explain the perception of opportunities and motivation to be entrepreneur (10%). Finally, the remaining 8% used some financial aspect as the dependent variable. As already mentioned, the GEM project has two main sources of data: the adult population survey (APS) and the national expert survey (NES). It is interesting to note that 95% of the articles uses the APS and a by consequence only 5% use the information provided by national experts, supplemented by APS data. Thus, it is clear that the information provided by experts is an untapped opportunity in future publications. 13

14 Most of the articles have two authors (57%), 30% with three authors, 6% have four or more authors and 7% have a single author. Likewise, the average number of authors per article is These results highlight the importance of research teams working on the individual. To approximate the activity of the national teams were classified items according to the country for each of the authors 9. The three countries with more items is the United States (17.4%) followed by Netherlands (15%), and the UK (13.8%). As seen in Table 5 there is a clear predominance of authors from European universities and institutions that is consistent with the greater number of participating countries of this continent. But considering that between 2001 and 2009 have participated in the GEM Project 76 countries, we can say that the number of countries with scientific publications is still very low. Note also that despite the high participation of Latin American countries in GEM project (13 countries), there are only publications from Chile. This fact can be regarded as a niche research for Latin American scientific community. [Insert Table 5] To analyze the impact of the articles made use of the appointments according to the SSCI. Results indicate that the most cited article (56 citations) is Reynolds et al. (2005) which described the GEM s methodology and the project development. This is followed with 35 cites by Wennekers et al. (2005) which shows a U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurial activity and level of economic development. Below are Arenius and Minniti (2005) and van Stel et al. (2005) with 34 and 33 citations each. Table 6 presents the 15 most cited papers 10. [Insert Table 6] Furthermore, the authors that published more articles are Acs, Arenius with seven, Thurik and van Stel with six articles and Autio, Minniti and Hessels with four aticles (see Table 7). 9 The country of the author refers to the country associated with the first affiliation institution in was developing his scientific activity at the time of publication and not the country of origin or residence. 10 With more years of publishing, the articles have more chances of being cited compared with others recently published. Therefore, it is often calculated an index of citations weighted by the number of years of publication. In this sense, this work has not considered this index because of the results do not vary with respect to those presented in Table 6 (since the horizon-period between 2005 and is quite small). 14

15 [Insert Table 7] In order to complement the above results graphical representations of contingency tables were developed (correspondence analysis 11 ). These correspondences allow associations and similarities evident in the publications that make use of the GEM database. As presented in the section related to the conceptual framework, this work is regarded to the institutional approach. Nevertheless, the economic approach of new business creation is considered, for purposes of comparison. In this sense, initially examined whether it was possible to establish a statistically significant association between the different journals and approaches (institutional / economic), however the significance level of χ relationship is not significant. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the economic approach is mainly used by Small Business Economics in 12 of the 64 empirical articles and an article on Entrepreneurship & Regional Development. The remaining articles focus on the analysis of environmental factors. Subsequently we explored the relationship between the level of analysis and approaches (institutional / economic). The results indicate that the χ 2 2 indicates that the is with 8 degrees of freedom, significant at 0.00, and therefore concluded that there is a statistical association between the level of analysis and focus. The graphical representation helps to visualize this relationship. Figure 3 presents the scatter diagram biespacial between the level of analysis and approaches. For each variable on the graph the distances between the categories points reflect the relationship between the categories with similar ones represented close to each other. Figure 3 shows that informal institutional factors are associated with a micro level of analysis, while the formal institutional factors and the economic approach are associated with a macro level of analysis. We also found a statistically significant association of 0.01 (χ 2 of with 12 degrees of freedom) between the statistical techniques used in the articles and approaches (institutional / 11 Correspondence analysis is a data analysis technique that allows the graphic representation of two or more qualitative variables, showing the interdependence between variables in a manner similar to principal component analysis (Hoffman and Franke 1986). 15

16 economic), with a clearly relationship between the formal and informal institutional factors with logistical techniques and the economic approach with the use of regression analysis (see Figure 4). Finally the Figure 5 characterizes a tridimensional representation of the resrech using the journals like cutting points. If well this close-neighbor confirms some clear relations between some statistical techniques, type of approaches and level, possible future lines of research will be analyze the macro vision of the institutional approach and, using the GEM data for further micro view of the economic approach and try to fill the empty spaces. [Insert Figure 3] [Insert Figure 4] [Insert Figure 5] 5. CONCLUSIONS The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project is currently the largest study of entrepreneurial activity in the world started in 1999 with 10 countries and on the latest research from 2009 involved 54 countries (Bosma and Levie 2010). It has also managed to consolidate a team of more than 200 academics and researchers who produces the annual national and regional reports, explores specific themes (women entrepreneurs, high-growth new ventures, financing of new ventures, entrepreneurship education and training, social entrepreneurship, etc.) and allows access to harmonized information on the entrepreneurial phenomenon, which facilitates international comparisons. In addition, national reports provide an important basis for the design of government policies related to enhance the entrepreneurship activity in their respective countries. Furthermore, would highlight the academic and scientific spirit of the project related with the increased number of publications based on GEM data. As we mention this research is growing stronger and gradually achieving greater globally legitimacy in the field of entrepreneurship. In this paper we have analyzed articles that use GEM data, published in journals indexed by SCCI. We note that there are not articles in major publications in the area of "Business", showing a possible challenge to consolidate research on the GEM. In this sense there are apparent barriers in this type of journals related to general entrepreneurship topics and specific using GEM data. However, this trend is expected to be invested in the coming years due to the strength and positioning that are taking the discipline of entrepreneurship in the 16

17 academy, along with the availability of data provided by the project, a necessary condition for develop a high-quality empirical work. On the other hand, the total number of articles arising from GEM research is still small, considering that the first data appeared in While the first publications are from 2004, our analysis indicate that the number of articles per year tends to increase. Special mention to the journal which stimulates GEM research: Small Business Economics, characterized by a strong economic focus, consistent with the objective of the GEM. However, in light of the conceptual framework used, the most investigated issue is related to factors relating to the institutional approach either informal factors (44%), formal factors (22%) and both approaches (5%) compared to 29% using the strictly economic approach. In this connection, apart from the social conditions of the environment of entrepreneurship, several authors discuss the government's policies and procedures, financial assistance and expertise and entrepreneurial skills. Surely, this interest is due to the impact that increasingly, governments have in the design of policies to promote entrepreneurship, which require rigorous empirical evidence for proper planning and implementation. As well there are some methodological work, which presents the GEM model and compared their results with other measures of entrepreneurial activity, the theoretical studies are scarce and limited to the description of the project, focusing on the introductions to special issues. More specifically, the level of analysis considered, 45% items point to a micro perspective from logistic regression techniques, compared with a macro perspective (45%) from linear regressions. In this context, the regional analysis entrepreneurial activity could be considered as a possible line of future research. In turn, the results show the limited use of information from national experts, making it, together with the absence of qualitative work (case studies), another challenge for researchers who are part of the GEM. Referring to the analysis of authors and articles, as might be expected, the most cited article is the one that introduces and describes the model of the GEM (Reynolds et al. 2005), followed by the article by Wennekers et al. (2005). We believe that both articles have had a strong influence on the development entrepreneurship discipline, one like a milestone of the project 17

18 the second like a starting point on the discussion related to the use of GEM data. For its part, the authors are more articles are Acs, Arenius, van Stel, Thurik, Autio, Hessels and Minniti.. The average number of authors per article is 2.42, indicating the prevalence of research teams working over on individual efforts. This aspect confirms the new dynamics of research that encourage teamwork and complementarily of its members over individualism of the past. However, the results indicate that the 76 countries that have participated in at least one year on GEM Project, only 24 of them have an author with at least one article, but only five (USA, UK, Netherlands, Spain and Germany) account for more than 50% of the publications. In this sense, it would require that different national teams go beyond the phase of implementation of the project and increasing the scientific exploitation of the results and hence publications on good impact journals (Urbano et al. 2010). This is a natural evolution of the GEM project that could evolve not only high quality reports but also the publication of high quality academic articles. In addition, another consideration for future research, especially by the scientific community in emerging countries, could be the analysis of the entrepreneurship dynamics in their own cultural context and applying the institutional approach. For example there is a high participation of Latin American countries in GEM but little involvement in publications. As a final conclusion, we want to underline the significant progress that has been made in GEM research, positioning the database as one of the most significant source of reference, used in leading high-impact journals in the entrepreneurship area according JCR. Nevertheless, academic progress in social sciences, beyond the field of entrepreneurship, via the strengthening and promoting the use of GEM database, especially in other JCR high-impact journals. 18

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