Trademarks and their association with Kirznerian entrepreneurs

Abstract

Although trademarks are the most widely used form of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) by firms across all economic sectors worldwide, this indicator is a much less exploited information resource in empirical analysis compared with patents. Our work addresses this gap by investigating the relationship between trademark registration and entrepreneurial activity using data for 33 European countries. Our empirical results show a positive and significant relationship between the share of the self-employed workforce in a given country that can be considered ‘entrepreneurial’ –which we associate with the share of Kirznerian entrepreneurs– and trademark registration at the country level. These results have important implications for scholars, practitioners and policy makers, which are discussed in this work.