Transnational entrepreneurs: Opportunity or necessity driven? Empirical Evidence from two dynamic economies from Latin America and Europe

Abstract

Transnational Entrepreneurship (TE) is an increasingly important phenomenon, symptomatic for a globalized world with a large extent of migrants and interchanges between their countries of origin and residence. Our article deploys a unique data set which compares TE for two different national contexts and institutional settings: Chile and Germany. Using data from2016 and 2017 Adult Populations Surveys (APS) of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), we relate the probability of being an opportunity driven entrepreneur with the condition of being a transnational entrepreneur. Our findings suggest that varying institutional settings attract or form different types of TE. While Chile seems to attract mainly opportunity driven TE,TE in Germany reveals strong evidence of necessity driven TE. In addition, we explore different traits on the probability of being involved in TE based on the presumption that transnational entrepreneurs show signs of higher opportunity recognition and network embeddedness and can thereby be a major driver of entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as act as linkages between different national systems.