Abstract

The system-wide implications of entrepreneurship are usually linked to the effects of innovation on economic growth or to the consequences of alternative institutional settings on various forms of entrepreneurial activity. Yet the motivations and consequences of system-wide entrepreneurship go well beyond those related to innovation and institutions. The goal of this chapter is to show that the market process is entrepreneurial in all its aspects, including its most quotidian operations and adjustments. Specifically, this chapter argues that adopting a Kirznerian alertness perspective allows us to appreciate how entrepreneurship is essential to, and at the center of, the whole dynamic market process, including not only innovation and institutions but also growth, allocation of resources, equilibration, and business cycles, all of which are, ultimately, products of entrepreneurial action.