Friday 21 December 2007

The relationship between English and the entrepreneur

Over at Free exchange they are asking "But what's the English word for entrepreneur?". They point to new reseach that argues that the US and the UK "maintain an interesting dominance over other vital aspects of modern cultural and economic life. According to new research presented at VoxEU, nearly three quarters of the world's most highly-cited researchers (hereafter HCRs) work in America or Britain (with America alone accounting for 66 percent of such researchers). The wealth is shared with former British colonial possessions; when ranked by top researchers per million inhabitants, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand join America and Britain in the top ten."

The reason for this is, according to the authors of the VoxEU study, "two principle factors: the institutional design of "Anglo-Saxon" universities (emphasising efficiency and performance), and a nation's English-language proficiency. Many of the other high performers are northern European nations with high levels of English proficiency, and Israel also makes the top ten."

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