Introduction: This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Mark Casson's "The Entrepreneur" presents a novel synthesis of the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter, Frank Knight and Friedrich Hayek, according to which the defining characteristic of the entrepreneur is the exercise of judgement in business decisions. The volume argues that good judgement is based on a unique combination of information, and that this information is typically exploited by founding a "market-making" firm, which links customers and suppliers who could not otherwise make contact with each other. This assessment of entrepreneurship, Mark Casson contends, has important implications for the growth of firms, social mobility and "enterprise culture".


马克·卡森（Mark Casson）生于1945年，英国雷丁大学经济学教授。早期致力于创业家的研究，近年又专注于创业理论与道统企业理论融合的研究。卡森创业理论的内核是“创业家式判断（Entrepreneurial judgment）。卡森之前的经济学文献大都从功能观点给创业家下定义，强调创业家的作用并认为发挥这些作用的人就是创业家。在各式各样的创业家功能中缺乏一条贯穿其中的主线。卡森坚持从伦理人假设和有限理性假设，沿着方法论个人主义和契约理论的“路径”，从所有关于创业家的经济理论和心理学、社会学的论述中，概括出创业家行为本身的性质，建立了一个创业家需求、供给和“创业家市场”均衡的理论框架，并对之进行了模型化。卡森并指出，创业的经济理论与交易费用经济学、基于资源的企业理论等现代企业理论有着紧密的联系。（来自百度百科）