Of production to exploit them in a firm. As the prime mover in economic activity the entrepreneur

has received attention from the beginnings of economics (for example, by Cantillon* and

Say**), but, as Mark Casson has recently pointed out, he has never been fully integrated into modem

Economic theory. In the static neo-classical economics of perfect competition there is no place

For the entrepreneur, since it is assumed that there is perfect information and perfect freedom of

entry. After Knight***, the pure function of the entrepreneur is to deal with uncertainty in the

Dynamic, imperfect, real world in which profit is a return to uncertainty and entrepreneurship is

Inseparable from control of the firm in which he operates. The essence of the entrepreneur, therefore,

Is that he is alert to gaps in the market which others do not see and is able to raise the finance

And other resources required by a firm to exploit the market that he initiates.

If successful he will make a super-normal profit that will later reduce to a normal profit as new

Competitors are attracted into the market. In this conception, the pure function of the entrepreneur

Is as a fourth factor of production.

Other functions than risk-taking have been attributed by economists to the entrepreneur: invention,

The provision of risk capital and management, for example. Though not part of the pure entrepreneurial