Historical Prevalence of Infectious Diseases and Entrepreneurship: evidence from 125 Countries

Messono Omang () and Simplice Asongu
Additional contact information
Messono Omang: Douala, Cameroon

No 23/052, Working Papers from European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS)

Abstract: Purpose –This investigates the effects of the historical prevalence of infectious diseases on contemporary entrepreneurship. Previous studies reveal numerous proximate causes of entrepreneurship, but little is known about the fundamental determinants of this widespread economic concern. Design/methodology/approach –The central hypothesis is that historical pathogens exert persistent impacts on present-day entrepreneurship. We provide support for the underlying hypothesis using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) with cross-sectional data from 125 countries consisting of the averages between 2006 and 2018. Findings –Past diseases reduce entrepreneurship both directly and indirectly. The strongest indirect effects occur through GDP per capita, property rights, innovation, entrepreneurial attitudes, entrepreneurial abilities, entrepreneurial aspirations, and skills. This result is robust to many sensitivity tests. Policy makers may take these findings into account and incorporate disease pathogens into the design of entrepreneurship. Originality/value –The novelty of this paper lies in the adoption of a historical approach that sheds light on the deep historical roots of cross-country differences in entrepreneurship.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; diseases; property rights, innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I0 I21 I31 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2023-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Forthcoming: Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies

Downloads: (external link)
http://publications.excas.org/RePEc/exs/exs-wpaper ... om-125-countries.pdf Revised version, 2023 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Internal Server Error

Related works:
Working Paper: Historical Prevalence of Infectious Diseases and Entrepreneurship: evidence from 125 Countries (2023)
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:exs:wpaper:23/052

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anutechia Asongu Simplice ().