Suchergebnisse

Purpose
Using the 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey data, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributing factors of entrepreneurial propensity among males and females in Ghana.


Design/methodology/approach
Using a measure of entrepreneurial propensity that takes into account individuals who are involved in starting a new business (nascent entrepreneurs) as a dependent variable and socio-demographic characteristics, and perceptual variables as explanatory variables, the study adopts robust empirical estimation techniques to examine how these variables influence the probability of starting a new business among men and women in Ghana.


Findings
The probability of being a male nascent entrepreneur is significantly dependent upon a wide range of factors including demographic, economic, perceptual and contextual elements, albeit with important variations across gender. An individuals' subjective assessment of fear of failure in starting a business and of having the requisite entrepreneurial capabilities; the age of the individual; gender of the individual; work status and contextual factors matters for entrepreneurial propensity in Ghana. However, important differences exist in the drivers of entrepreneurial propensity for males and females with females' entrepreneurship attributed largely to conditions of necessity relative to their male counterparts.


Originality/value
The main value of this paper is to use the GEM survey (which is nationally representative) for Ghana to analyze the contributing factors of the entrepreneurial propensity among men and women in Ghana.

AbstractThe financial sector in rural areas, where most of the poor people in sub‐Saharan Africa are found, has transformed massively in recent times, notably through the increased penetration of several types of rural financial intermediaries in addition to rural and community banks and microfinance institutions. Using recent household survey data, we ascertain the access of rural populations to various types of financial services, and the influence of rural financial intermediation on poverty reduction, in Ghana. By accounting for the potential endogeneity of access to financial services, we show that rural households with access to basic financial services are significantly more likely to be nonpoor than those without such access. To more sustainably tackle the goal highlighted in the sustainable development goals of eliminating global hunger or extreme poverty, the poor must be allowed to obtain meaningful access to financial services through the design of efficient pro‐poor financial products.

This book examines heterogeneity within informal work by applying a common conceptual framework and empirical methodology. It contains countries studies that use panel data to present a comparative perspective on worker transitions between formal and informal work across developing countries across the Global South.

When are developing countries able to initiate periods of rapid growth and why have so few of these countries been able to sustain growth over decades? Deals and Development: The Political Dynamics of Growth Episodes seeks to answer these questions and many more through a novel conceptual framework built from a political economy of business–government relations. Economic growth for most developing countries is not a linear process. Growth instead proceeds in booms and busts, yet most frameworks for thinking about economic growth are built on the faulty assumption that a country's economic performance is largely stable. Deals and Development explains how growth episodes emerge and when growth, once ignited, is maintained for a sustained period. It applies its new framework to examining the growth of countries across a range of institutional and political contexts in Africa and Asia, using the examples of Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, and Uganda. Through these country analyses it demonstrates the explanatory power of its framework and the importance of feedback cycles in which economic trends interact with political behaviour to either sustain or terminate a growth episode. Offering a lens through which to analyse complex scenarios and unwieldy amounts of information, this book provides actionable levers of intervention to bring around reform and improve a country's chance at achieving transformative economic growth.