My latest Economics Explained episode on entrepreneurship featuring Professor Peter G. Klein of Baylor University is now available.

Many universities now offer courses in entrepreneurship, as students have been inspired by tech entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. But what exactly is entrepreneurship and who qualifies as an entrepreneur? Is entrepreneurship essential for economic growth? To help answer these questions, I invited Professor Peter G. Klein on to Economics Explained. Peter is W. W. Caruth Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University in Texas. He is also Carl Menger Research Fellow at the Mises Institute.

Use these timestamps to jump right to the highlights:

• 2:25 – what is entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship as a mindset
• 6:50 – Was Donald Trump an entrepreneur?
• 15:50 – Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction
• 19:20 – Peter’s Entrepreneurial Judgment model (check out Peter’s book co-authored with Nikolai J. Foss Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment and Peter’s Murray N. Rothbard lecture The Present State of Entrepreneurship Research on YouTube)
• 26:15 – I mentions Cal Newport’s point that Steve Jobs thought the big value add of the iPhone was you could have your phone and iPod in the one device and didn’t foresee just how important all the apps would be (check out Newport’s great book Digital Minimalism)
• 35:15 – discussion of best places to be an entrepreneur, in which Peter tells me that Australia may not be as bad as he thinks, and Austin, Texas is attracting people who are leaving Silicon Valley
• 39:05 – Peter says entrepreneurs are “absolutely front and centre in process of economic growth”
• 44:15 – Peter refers to “the allure of fine tuning the economy” regarding frequent tweaks to R&D tax incentives

The episode was recorded via Zoom video conferencing on the 12th of February 2020.