Gender Gaps in Time Use and Entrepreneurship

Pedro Bento (), Lin Shao () and Faisal Sohail ()
Additional contact information
Pedro Bento: Texas A&M University, Department of Economics
Lin Shao: Bank of Canada
Faisal Sohail: University of Melbourne, Department of Economics

No 20230901-001, Working Papers from Texas A&M University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The prevalence of entrepreneurs, particularly low-productivity non-employers, declines as economies develop. This decline is more pronounced for women. Relative to men, they are more likely to be entrepreneurs in poor economies but less likely in rich economies. We investigate whether gender gaps in time dedicated to non-market activities, which narrow with development, can account for this pattern. We develop a quantitative framework in which selection into occupations depends on one's ability and time, and features gender-specific distortions and social norms around market work. When calibrated to match cross-country data, we find that differences in social norms are almost entirely responsible for the patterns of gender gaps in both time use and entrepreneurship. Through these channels, social norms account for a substantial part of cross-country differences in output per worker and firm size, and have significant welfare implications for women.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; time use; gender; development; firm size. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 L2 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 84 pages
Date: 2023-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ent, nep-gen, nep-lma and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://pvsessions.tamu.edu/RePEc/bento_shao_sohail_fbworld.pdf First version, 2023 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to pvsessions.tamu.edu:443 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
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:txm:wpaper:20230901-001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Texas A&M University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pedro Bento ().