Principles of Economics Without the Prince of Denmark

Abstract

In most introductory textbooks on principles of economics, discussion of the theory or practice of entrepreneurship is almost entirely absent. This omission is striking, given the important role in economic growth that economists assign to the entrepreneur. While there are plausible explanations for this omission, new research suggests the beginnings of a body of formal microtheory on innovative entrepreneurship. In this article, the authors first review treatment of the entrepreneur in the latest editions of three commonly used introductory economics textbooks, each of which includes a substantive discussion of entrepreneurship. Second, the authors present brief overviews of new microtheories of entrepreneurship (Parker 2009 Parker, S. C. 2009. The economics of entrepreneurship, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Spulber 2009; and Baumol 2010 Baumol, W. J. 2010. The microtheory of innovative entrepreneurship, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), each of which has potential to serve as inspiration and to provide a framework for inclusion of entrepreneurship in introductory microtheory.