The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins

Sarah Flèche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Can capital constraints explain why there are more male than female entrepreneurs in most societies? We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing between large to small winners, we find that an increase in lottery win in period t-1 significantly increases the likelihood of becoming self-employed in period t. This windfall effect is statistically the same in magnitude for men and women; a one percent increase in exogenous income increases the probability of female selfemployment by 0.6 percentage points, which is approximately 10% of the gender entrepreneurial gap. These results suggest that we can causally reduce the gender entrepreneurial gap by improving women's access to capital that might not be as readily available to the aspiring female entrepreneurs as it is to male entrepreneurs.

Keywords: gender inequality; self-employment; lottery wins (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-ltv
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03472910v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2021, 188, pp.591-607. ⟨10.1016/j.jebo.2021.05.038⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03472910v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: A longitudinal study of lottery wins (2021)
Working Paper: The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins (2021)
Working Paper: The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins (2021)
Working Paper: The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins (2021)
Working Paper: The Importance of Capital in Closing the Entrepreneurial Gender Gap: A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Wins (2021)
Working Paper: The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins (2021)
Working Paper: The Importance of Capital in Closing the Entrepreneurial Gender Gap: A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Wins (2021)
Working Paper: The Importance of Capital in Closing the Entrepreneurial Gender Gap: A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Wins (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03472910

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.05.038

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().