The Relationship between Search Engines and Entrepreneurship Development: A Granger-VECM Approach

Michael Olumekor, Hossam Haddad and Nidal Mahmoud Al-Ramahi ()
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Michael Olumekor: Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, 620014 Yekaterinburg, Russia
Hossam Haddad: Accounting Department, Business Faculty, Zarqa University, Zarqa 13133, Jordan
Nidal Mahmoud Al-Ramahi: Accounting Department, Business Faculty, Zarqa University, Zarqa 13133, Jordan

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-16

Abstract: The decision to set-up a business as a sole proprietor—also individual entrepreneur or sole trader—is a consequential one for every nascent entrepreneur. Sole proprietorship businesses have remained the most popular business structure in many countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, and are vital to the sustainable development of countries and regions. In this research, we developed a model to investigate if increased online interest in sole proprietorships led to the creation of new sole proprietorship businesses in four regions of Russia. Search engine data were retrieved from Russia’s most popular search engine, Yandex, whereas data on newly registered individual entrepreneurship businesses were retrieved from Russia’s Federal Tax Service. Our model was comprised of a range of statistical methods, including the augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test, the Johansen cointegration test, the Granger causality Wald test, and the vector error correction model. The results revealed a unidirectional causal relationship between search engine data and newly established individual entrepreneurship businesses. This means that interest in individual entrepreneurship, measured through search engine data, influenced the creation of new individual entrepreneurship businesses. This research provides a pioneering empirical investigation of the topic in post-Soviet states, and its main contribution includes introducing search engine data as a key tool for assessing entrepreneurial intention.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; development; sole proprietor; sole trader; individual entrepreneur; small business; search engine; Internet; small business; Granger (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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