Dr Jeff Cornwall

American City Business Journals issued their report on entrepreneurial hot spots.
Their methodology is quite simple.
“ACBJ used a four-category formula to rate local climates for small businesses, defined as companies with fewer than 100 employees. The categories were:
* Number of small businesses per 100,000 residents
* Change in the number of small businesses from 2000 to 2002 (the latest year for which official figures are available)
* Change in private-sector employment from 2000 to 2002
* Change in private-sector payrolls from 2000 to 2002”
You can link to a complete Excel file of the large markets, medium markets, and small markets.
In another report, the CFED issued their 2004 report card on states that they consider to be friendly to entrepreneurial development. But this report, as I pointed out last year, is fatally flawed in its operationalization of what constitutes “entrepreneurially friendly.” Rather than base their rankings on true entrepreneurial activity, as in the American City Business Journals report, it is based on their own big government agenda.
CFED includes such measures as “income disparity between rich and poor”, payroll employment rates, research funding allocated to universities, and other measures of government spending and just plain general meddling.
The evidence of what stimulates entrepreneurial activity, however, is to the contrary. Government actions get in the way of entrepreneurial development. CFED doesn’t focus on entrepreneurial activity for most of their report, just those things that are part of their socialistic leaning policy agenda.
But nothing reinforces my assertions on the wrongness of their report than their honor roll:
Earning all As is:
* Connecticut
Earning As and Bs are:
* Delaware
* Massachusetts
* Minnesota
* New Hampshire
* Oregon
* Virginia
Most of these are “big government” states, which is what their report card really measures.