Informal Institutions, Entrepreneurship, and Social Progress: A Comparative and Correlational Study

Abstract

This article carries out a comparative analysis between a group of six countries made up of Australia, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, on the one hand and Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, on the other hand. These countries were selected from the differences that they present in terms of social progress, entrepreneurship, and culture. The objective is to find relationships among certain informal institutions, the level of entrepreneurship and social progress. The type of study is descriptive and explora-tory, with correlational scopes, where information from the cultural dimensions of Hofstede Insights (2018), the Global Entrepreneurship Index of 2018 and the Social Progress Index of 2018 is used. On a general level, results show correlations that reveal a tendency of the more developed countries to register a lower power distance, less aversion to uncertainty and a preference towards individualism, besides greater social progress and better environmental quality.