Do you have statistics demonstrating that, per capita, the USA outperforms Nordic countries on entrepreneurship?

I don't either way. But I have run across the counterintuitive fact that Nordic countries outperform the USA on how many people per capita are worth at least $30 million. And at least some of them got there through entrepreneurship.

Can't ignore old money. Nordics (most obviously Sweden and Denmark), Baltics (Lithuania) and many CEE countries (Poland) have hundreds of old aristocratic families with family trees two to four times as old as the US.

This article is a good summary and links to several studies. https://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene...

Here are a couple of the most relevant: http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf and https://www.nber.org/papers/w19276.pdf

I don't know of any research, but personally know people who looked for ways to start their company while hedging various risks[1], couldn't find a way, and never tried.

I started a company after the first dot.com bust, because I had almost nothing to lose. But I also had no dependents to hurt. So it can cut both ways, but I don't think many folks take the path I did by choice.

[1] One had a spouse with a chronic medical condition, losing insurance was not an option; one had a large student loan debt and didn't want to risk defaulting. I've heard other stories.

There are cultural factors as well that make entrepreneurs valued and respected in the USA in ways they aren't in other places, so the right comparison doesn't seem to be across countries (where non-financial cultural factors may overshadow all else) but within a country in which the government-supplied safety net is severely lacking. In the USA, those best-suited to pursue entrepreneurship are those for whom the personal safety net is strong, despite the overall national safety net being weak.

> with it's terribly scary and risky path of entrepreneurship completely outperforms welfare state countries like the Nordics

or maybe it's worse than you suggest: taking a risk on a startup is the only opportunity to earn any income, where "welfare state countries" take basic income out of the picture. And, according to which mesurement are these welfare states being outperformed? and is it relevant to the humans involved?

It isn't the only opportunity in the US at least (Artisinal miners, tree poachers, dump pickers, and street vendors certainly certainly are an example and can be found), but that it tends to pay the most. In addition to some social baggage that the individual may have had. Drop out (small) business owner who has issues with authority other than their own is a niche stereotype.

Apparently according to some traveler's accounts Ukraine has a lot of "side hustles" due to lower wages of day jobs and lack of consolidation.

I suspect it may be both and a result of culture shaping actions shaping culture. Essentially a more risk adverse culture is more likely to support a strong safety net and a culture with a strong safety net is in itself incentivised to not encourage have people take stupid risks even if the nominal purpose is to allow those risks. (That sort of left hand vs right hand thing crops up every organization large enough with distinct duties.)

Then there is the whole Maslow hierarchy of needs aspect where they would ironically need to be better off before considering anything collective. Revolutions have been lead by disgruntled college students far more often than the desperately poor.

I don’t think the issue being brought up here is the outcome of the entrepreneur (and their companies) but moreso the Well being of the entrepreneur

It's easy to find many countries with much worse social nets than the USA, but with worse entrepreneurial outcomes. The social net versus entrepreneurial outcome function might not be a monotonically increasing one.

> Can you link me to some researcher where a stronger social net leads to better entrepreneur outcomes?

is Harvard good enough?

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/07/public-progra...

https://www.nber.org/papers/w18441.pdf

> looking at country level data, USA, with it's terribly scary and risky path of entrepreneurship completely outperforms welfare state countries like the Nordics.

False.

>> The U.S. likes to think of itself as the world capital of start-ups. But America doesn't lead the world in actually starting new businesses. By various measures, it's behind Canada, Denmark, and Norway.

https://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-sa...

They clearly means successful businesses.