Coverage of Entrepreneurship in Principles of Economics Textbooks: An Update

Abstract

An analysis of the coverage of entrepreneurship contained in principles of economics textbooks in the mid-1980s (Kent 1989) revealed that entrepreneurship was either neglected, improperly presented, or only partially covered. Our purpose is to update that study by analyzing the coverage of entrepreneurship over a decade later in 14 popular introductory texts. Not all of the same textbooks were used as in the earlier study because some are no longer in print. The texts we used are listed in the Appendix. For this study, the same functional definition of entrepreneurship' and the 23 concepts used in the previous study were employed as a means of determining the scope of inclusion of entrepreneurship in current textbooks. These 23 concepts can be grouped into six major categories (Table 1). From this content analysis, it appears that entrepreneurship still has not worked its way into economics principles texts. As a result, students may be left with an incomplete understanding of the economic process.