Insight

Explaining the US-UK Ambition Gap

ERC Insight Paper

Authors
Associated Themes
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Productivity and performance

Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor highlights a persistent gap between the US and the UK in the proportion of business owner-managers with high growth expectations. Professor Jonathan Levie examines the evidence and finds that employers in the UK and the US are in fact equally likely to be ambitious. He concludes that the ambition gap is a result of a rising proportion of new self-employed with no employees and relatively low growth ambition in the UK and a significant increase in the number of established business owners with employees in the US.

Downloads