Size Matters: Entrepreneurial Entry and Government

Ruta Aidis, Saul Estrin () and Tomasz Mickiewicz
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Saul Estrin: London School of Economics

No 5052, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We explore the country-specific institutional characteristics likely to influence an individual's decision to become an entrepreneur. We focus on the size of the government, on freedom from corruption, and on 'market freedom' defined as a cluster of variables related to protection of property rights and regulation. We test these relationships by combining country-level institutional indicators for 47 countries with working age population survey data taken from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Our results indicate that entrepreneurial entry is inversely related to the size of the government, and more weakly to the extent of corruption. A cluster of institutional indicators representing 'market freedom' is only significant in some specifications. Freedom from corruption is significantly related to entrepreneurial entry, especially when the richest countries are removed from the sample but unlike the size of government, the results on corruption are not confirmed by country-level fixed effects models.

Keywords: market freedom; government; entrepreneurship; corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 P14 P37 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published - published in: Small Business Economics, 2012, 39 (1), 119-139

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Journal Article: Size matters: entrepreneurial entry and government (2012)
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