Abstract: The term 'entrepreneur' was first coined by Cantillon (Kilby, 1984) who described an entrepreneur as somebody who buys goods or services at certain prices with a view to selling them in future at uncertain prices and who thus takes a risk. The French economist Say later described the entrepreneurial functions in broader terms; however Adam Smith, the famous English economist, saw entrepreneurs as mere capitalists and employers. Mill, taking his cue from Cantillon and Say, separated the entrepreneurial function from that of providing capital but Marshall went back to the view of Smith in his economic theory. Other traditional economists looked upon entrepreneurship as the residual factor in the process of factor combination. They did not analyze the term further but only made assumptions regarding the investment behavior of entrepreneurs. Schumpeter (1934) changed this approach by focusing on innovation, this being in his opinion the most important function of an entrepreneur. More recently models of transaction cost analysis have been applied to explain entrepreneurial behavior in economic terms (Williamson, 1981).
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot