9. Reader’s guide for the country profiles

Overview

This section of the book provides a short overview of inclusive entrepreneurship trends and recent policy actions in each European Union Member State. Each Country Profile presents recent trends for key inclusive entrepreneurship indicators, focusing on self-employment and entrepreneurship activity rates, motivations for business creation and growth aspirations for women, immigrant, youth and senior entrepreneurs. In addition, the Country Profiles highlight recent policy developments related to inclusive entrepreneurship, notably actions to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, immigrant, senior and youth entrepreneurs.

Description of indicators

The Country Profiles include a common set of country-specific data that benchmark key inclusive entrepreneurship indicators against the European Union average. Data are presented for men, women, youth, seniors and the overall population. These data help to show the scale of the challenge and its recent evolution. Each profile contains six figures:

• Panel a: Conditions for entrepreneurship, 2020. This figure presents four indicators to provide an overview of the conditions for business creation in each country:

  • Administrative burden is defined as the simple average of the scores for four component indicators for starting a business – procedure (number), time (days), cost (% of income per capita) and paid-in minimum capital requirement (current as of 1 May 2019) (World Bank, 2020[1]).

  • Entrepreneurship skills is defined as the percentage of the adult population (18-64 years old) – excluding individuals involved in any stage of entrepreneurial activity – who believe that they have the required skills and knowledge to start a business. This indicator covers the period 2016 to 2020 (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2021[2]).

  • SME lending is defined as the share of SME loans to total outstanding business loans in 2020 (OECD, forthcoming[3]).

  • Entrepreneurship expectation is defined as a percentage of the adult population (18-64 years old) – excluding individuals involved in any stage of entrepreneurial activity – who intend to start a business within the next three years. This indicator covers the period 2016 to 2020 (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2021[2]).

• Panel b: Total Early-stage Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA) rate, 2016-20. This presents the proportion of the adult population (18-64 years old) that is actively involved in starting a business or who is the owner-operator of a business that is less than 42 months old. Data are presented for the overall population, men, women, youth (18-30 years old) and seniors (50-64 years old) for the period 2016 to 2020 (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2021[2]).

• Panel c. Proportion of TEA that is necessity-based entrepreneurship, 2016-20. This presents the proportion of early-stage entrepreneurs (18-64 years old) who launched their business due to a lack of other opportunities in the labour market. Data are presented for the overall population, men, women, youth (18-30 years old) and seniors (50-64 years old) for the period 2016 to 2020 (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2021[2]).

• Panel d: Proportion of early-stage entrepreneurs who expect to create more than 19 jobs in five years, 2016-20. This presents the proportion of early-stage entrepreneurs (18-64 years old) who anticipate the creation of at least 19 additional new jobs over the next five years. Data are presented for the overall population, men, women, youth (18-30 years old) and seniors (50-64 years old) for the period 2016 to 2020 (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2021[2]).

• Panel e: Self-employment rate. This presents the proportion of those aged 15-64 years old in employment who are self-employed. Data are presented for the overall population, women, immigrants, youth (20-29 years old) and seniors (50-64 years old) for the period 2011 to 2020 (Eurostat, 2021[4]).

• Panel f: Proportion of self-employed people that have employees. This presents the share of the self-employed (15-64 years old) that employ at least one other person. Data are presented for the overall population, women, immigrants, youth (20-29 years old) and seniors (50-64 years old) for the period 2011 to 2020 (Eurostat, 2021[4]).

In Panel a, the data for the EU average refers to the median and excludes Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Lithuania, Malta and Romania for the indicators entrepreneurship skills and entrepreneurship expectation. Furthermore, the data for SME lending excludes the following countries from the EU median: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania and Sweden.

In Panels b-d, the data for the EU average refers to a population-weighted average and excludes Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Lithuania, Malta and Romania since they did not participate in the GEM survey between 2016 and 2020. Furthermore, the following countries did not participate in the survey in every year over this period (years of participation are indicated): Austria (2016, 2018, 2020), Bulgaria (2016-18), Estonia (2016-17), Finland (2016), France (2016-18), Hungary (2016), Ireland (2016-19), Latvia (2016-17, 2019-20) and Portugal (2016, 2019).

This set of Country Profiles draw on country-specific reports that are produced as part of the OECD and European Commission on inclusive entrepreneurship policies and programmes (OECD, 2020[5]). These reports are available at: https://www.oecd.org/cfe/smes/inclusive-entrepreneurshippolicies-country-assessment-notes.htm.