Entrepreneurship in Emerging Domestic Markets

As one examines worldwide economic growth over the past decade, it is clear that the U.S. economy has surpassed most of the industrialized world, both in its rate of growth and its ability to create wealth. Entrepreneurship is critical to this growth-entrepreneurs recognize the potential of new ideas, design applications, develop new products, and successfully bring products to market. They build companies and create jobs, generating new opportunities for wealth creation.

An often overlooked opportunity for entrepreneurship is the market segment known as emerging domestic markets (EDM). These low- to moderate-income communities, ethnic- and women-owned firms, and underinvested urban areas represent a rapidly growing component of the U.S. population. Smart investors seeking untapped opportunities are homing in on such markets. Visionary policy-makers recognize that given current demographic trends, America's national economic health depends increasingly on the vitality of EDM businesses. At the same time, it is clear that fostering entrepreneurship in emerging domestic markets is challenging on many levels.

Entrepreneurship in Emerging Domestic Markets: Barriers and Innovation explores the key issues surrounding EDM entrepreneurship. Leading researchers and practitioners from the fields of finance, entrepreneurship, economics, and government delve into data to identify the significant stumbling blocks and pose workable solutions. With this volume, the editors aim to provide scholars, investors, policy-makers, advocates, and the business community a tool to help leverage the significant entrepreneurial resources in emerging domestic markets.

"What a refreshing and important volume! The reader will learn, contrary to some microcredit adherents, that not everyone is an entrepreneur, and that new businesses started by poor people fail at an exceptionally high rate. Net result: perhaps credit is overestimated as asolution to poverty. Instead, the poor need secure, well-paying jobs, which is what real entrepreneurs can provide. What does it take, and what has it taken in the past, to encourage these entrepreneurs? What has stymied their progress? Barth, Yago, and Zeidman have gathered a set of papers that you will want to read."

Gerard Caprio, Jr. Professor, Economics Department and Chair Center for Development Economics, Williams College

"This book advances our understanding of the complexity and intractability of economic development in emerging U.S. domestic markets. Its underlying thesis is both intuitively appealing and sustained by research reported here: entrepreneurs are most likely to be the transformational leaders in these markets. Thoughtful practitioners, government policy-makers, and academic researchers will find this volume to be a stimulus to sound reflection."

Robert F. Bruner Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia

Auteur

Alethea Abuyuan is a Research Analyst for Energy and the Environment under the Capital Studies Group. Her primary assignments at MI involve the SAVE Initiative (Strategic Action Volunteer Effort), which aims to apply innovative environmental finance tools and techniques in the fields of climate change and alternative energy. She is also involved in economic development finance for emerging domestic markets (i.e. low-/ middle-income and minority communities), entrepreneurial finance, and mission-related investing/strategic philanthropy. Dr. Abuyuan is a recent graduate of the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California (USC), where her doctoral research focused on environmental policy, international development, and the non-profit sector. She also holds a Bachelor's degree in Sociology from the University of the Philippines and a Master's degree in Environmental Policy and Management from Yale University.

James Barth, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Milken Institute, and Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance at Auburn University. Barth's research has focused on financial institutions and capital markets, both domestic and global, with special emphasis on regulatory issues. Most recently, he served as leader of an international team advising the People's Bank of China on banking reform, co-authored Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern, Cambridge University Press, 2006, and is the overseas associate editor of China's The Banker.

Glenn Yago is Director of Capital Studies at the Milken Institute. He specializes in financial innovations, financial institutions and capital markets, and has extensively analyzed public policy relating to job creation and capital formation.Before coming to the Institute, Yago was Director of the Center for Capital Studies in New York, which he founded in 1992 to develop insight into the process of capital access and ownership change. He was a faculty member of the City Universityof New York Graduate Center Ph.D. Program in Economics, and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for the Study of Business Government at Baruch College-City University of New York.

Betsy Zeidman is Director of the Center for Emerging Domestic Markets (CEDM) at the Milken Institute. CEDM aims to increase the flow of capital to America's emerging entrepreneurs and communities through its research and information network, educational center and financial innovations laboratory. She manages the Center's activity in such areas as strategic philanthropy, mission-related investing, corporate governance and environmental finance. In this position, Zeidman works with foundations, governments, institutional and individual investors, entrepreneurs and policy makers. She authors articles and research reports, and speaks frequently at conferences and to the media.

Résumé

An often-overlooked aspect of entrepreneurship in American is its role in emerging domestic markets (EDM). These markets low-to-moderate income communities, ethnic- and women-owned businesses, urban areas are frequently ignored by mainstream markets. Yet with current demographic trends, they are an increasingly large component of the US population. Entrepreneurship can serve as a means to foster business development in these emerging communities and as a critically important way to improve the standard of living in low- and moderate-income (LMI) sectors.

Increasingly, policy makers, advocates and investors understand national economic growth demands business formation among all segments of the market, and that the best attack on poverty is job and wealth creation. A robust entrepreneurial climate helps address the challenges and harness the opportunities.

Entrepreneurship in Emerging Domestic Markets: Barriers and Innovation is a compendium of papers written by the leading researchers and practitioners from the fields of finance, public policy, entrepreneurship, and economics. With this volume, the editors aim to provide scholars, students, investors, policymakers, and the business community a resource that explores the issues surrounding entrepreneurship in EDM communities.

Contenu
Entrepreneurship in Low and Moderate Income Communities.- Alleviating the Lagging Performance of Economically Depressed Communities and Regions.- State of Literature on Small- to Medium-Sized Enterprises and Entrepreneurship in Low-Income Communities.- On Government Intervention in the Small-Firm Credit Market and Economic Performance.- Stumbling Blocks to Entrepreneurship in Low- and Moderate-Income Communities.- The Role of Morris Plan Lending Institutions in Expanding Consumer Microcredit in the United States.- Policies to Expand Minority Entrepreneurship: Closing Comments.