규제방식이 창업기업의 진입 및 혁신에 미치는 영향: 한국 사례를 중심으로

This paper studies the impact of regulatory approaches on innovation and entrepreneurship. As technological progress and environmental changes avail new business opportunities to innovative startups, many governments find it difficult to regulate new and unprecedented businesses promoted by the innovative firms. In order to provide academic and practitional implications on the regulatory design with which to support innovation and entrepreneurship, this paper aims to review classical theories on the demand and supply of regulation as well as empirical research on the impact of regulation on market entry and incentives for innovation. Based on the findings, this paper discusses the recent controversies around the regulatory approaches on new businesses pursued by startups, which are as known as the “positive regulatory approach” vs. “negative regulatory approaches” among practitioners and policy makers in Korea. This paper claims that the Korean context provides an useful opportunity to investigate how the ongoing transition of the once “fast follower” economy into a pacesetter one changes the nature of businesses pursued by firms, investors, and related market players and, accordingly, calls for the changes in the way the government intervenes in markets to regulate businesses of firms. By doing so, this paper sheds light on the role of the government in establishing an entrepreneurial ecosystem where innovative ideas of startups can be tested and nurtured.