Philippine E-Journals

Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Argentina

Sebastian Auguste | Alejandro Bricker

 

Abstract:

We investigate which factors affect the gender gap in entrepreneurship using evidence from CBMS Argentina and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition for nonlinear models. The dataset allows us to construct a series of personality variables (risk aversion, social aversion, outgoing attitude, flexibility desire, and effort aversion) which are usually missing in standard household surveys. In addition, we can measure current entrepreneurial activity as well as failure from the past. We fnd that there is no evidence of discrimination in the event of starting up, since the small gap between women and men can be fully explained once the new personality variables are taken into account. There is, however, a higher rate of failure for women that cannot be explained with the observed individual characteristics. As a consequence, it is a gender gap in attrition and not at the event of starting up what explains the current gap in entrepreneurship.