Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with Evidence from Swaziland

Zuzana Brixiová Schwidrowski, Mthuli Ncube () and Zorobabel Bicaba ()

No 8192, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The shortages of entrepreneurial skills have lowered search effectiveness of potential young entrepreneurs and the rate of youth start-ups. Our paper contributes to closing a gap in the entrepreneurship and development literature with a model of costly firm creation and skill differences between young and adult entrepreneurs. The model shows that for young entrepreneurs facing high costs of searching for business opportunities, support for training is more effective in stimulating productive start-ups than subsidies. The case for interventions targeted at youth rises in societies with high costs of youth unemployment. We test the role of skills and training for productive youth entrepreneurship on data from a recent survey of entrepreneurs in Swaziland.

Keywords: Africa; youth entrepreneurship; model of skills and structural transformation; policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J11 L26 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2014-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cse and nep-ent
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published - revised version published in: World Development, 2015, 67 (3), 11 - 26

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Related works:
Journal Article: Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with Evidence from Swaziland (2015)
Working Paper: Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with evidence from Swaziland (2014)
Working Paper: Skills and youth entrepreneurship in Africa: Analysis with evidence from Swaziland (2014)
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