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National Innovation Systems and Global Value Chain
Participation: The Role of Entrepreneurship

    The national innovation systems (NISs) literature has focused on institutional and
    industrial structures while overlooking creative individual agencies. This gap may

    leave unanswered the question of why some countries with weak institutional struc-
    tures still improve global value chain (GVC) participation. This study, thus, investi-
    gates how national entrepreneurial dynamism impacts a country’s GVC participation

    as conditioned by other elements of NISs. The empirical results show that entrepre-
    neurship is positively associated with GVC participation. Additionally, this positive

    relationship is stronger among countries with lower levels of intellectual property

    rights (IPR) protection and smaller amounts of R&D employment. The fndings sug-
    gest that entrepreneurship contributes to a country’s GVC participation and helps a

    country overcome its institutional weaknesses and, thus, achieve better globalization
    performance. Therefore, the study adds to NISs literature with creative individual
    agency, reveals the national internal avenue for GVC participation, and enriches the
    research on the NIS-GVC relationship.

    By
    Liang Wang, Zicheng Ma, Xin Zheng, Jianqi Zhang