## 3 Data and Method  
For identifying the relationship between entrepreneurial performance, national competitiveness and economic growth, we have considered a sample of 27 European Union (EU) member countries for a period of twelve years, 2008-2019. We excluded Greece from the sample because we did not find enough data for the indicators that measure the entrepreneurial performance. On 1 February 2020, the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU, however, considering that we analysed a past period, we kept this country in the sample. As shown in the literature [10; 31; 48], the analysis of the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth has provided different results for the cases of developing or developed countries. Therefore, because we set out to identify the particularities of the relation between the entrepreneurial performance, national competitiveness and economic growth according to the stage of development of countries, we have classified the countries into two groups, following the study conducted by [PERSON] (2017) [49]. The authors considered the level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as the criterion for classifying the countries into five groups. We have selected only those groups that fit the countries of the European Union, as follows: _efficiency-driven economies, in transition between efficiency and innovation and innovation-driven economies._ The variation ranges for the GDP per capita for the three groups are: between USD 3000 and 8999 for the economies considered to be efficiency-driven (Bulgaria), between USD 9000 and 17,000 for the countries in transition between efficiency and innovation (Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovak Republic) and over USD 17,000 for the innovation-driven group of countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom) [49; 50]. As Bulgaria is the only country included in the efficiency-driven stage, for our further analysis, we included it in the transition stage. Therefore, we focused our empirical analysis on two groups of EU countries: economies in transition and innovation-driven economies. To realise the empirical investigation, we have considered a set of indicators measuring the competitiveness level, the level of economic growth and also the entrepreneurial performance. Therefore, the dependent variables in our study are _the competitiveness index_ and _gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth_. The global competitiveness index (GCI) is composed of twelve pillars that measure a wide range of aspects of development [49]. These are represented by institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation. The GCI is an index calculated by the World Economic Forum for measuring the competitiveness of countries and results in an aggregation of 103 individual factors. Each component of the index is expressed by a progress score, on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents an ideal state where an issue ceases to be a constraint to productivity growth [51]. Data for these indicators were obtained from the World Bank (2020) [52]. To measure economic growth, we used the _GDP per capita growth_ indicator, which measures the annual percentage growth rate of GDP per capita based on constant local currency. The data for this indicator were gathered from World Development Indicators [53]. The use of GDP per capita growth for measuring the economic growth of countries is a common practice in the literature [10; 31; 48] so we have adopted this indicator for our analysis. The independent variables consist of a set of business demography indicators that can describe the entrepreneurial performance.