Entrepreneurship Data for Latin America and the Caribbean: What Is There and What Is Missing?

Data representing various aspects of entrepreneurship in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region are more abundant today than 10 years ago. The information about entrepreneurship in the LAC region, however, remains fragmented, as it has proliferated from different sources that vary in terms of degrees of coverage, units of analysis, and intended purposes. For the majority of LAC countries, there are dimensions of entrepreneurship for which data have either not been collected or are difficult to access. This technical note discusses what data are available and what data are missing, and opens a dialogue about the strategic decisions required to identify and prioritize the entrepreneurship data needs in the region. One thing is evident from past experience outside of the region: collecting intra- and extra-regionally comparable entrepreneurship data is a considerable undertaking that would benefit from strong public support, consensus among countries, and a solid statistical framework for data collection.