Historical prevalence of infectious diseases and entrepreneurship: evidence from 125 countries
Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies
ISSN: 2053-4604
Article publication date: 21 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate 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. The authors provide support for the underlying hypothesis using ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares 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. Policymakers 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
Acknowledgements
This paper is an extended version of Messono and Asongu (2021).
The authors are indebted to the editor and reviewers for constructive comments.
Ethical approval and consent to participate: This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by the authors.
Consent to publish: Not applicable.
Authors’ contributions: M.O.O and S.A.A participated in the drafting of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding: This is an unfunded paper.
Competing interest: The authors have neither financial nor nonfinancial competing interests.
Availability of data and materials: The data for this paper is available upon request.
Citation
Messono, O.O. and Asongu, S. (2023), "Historical prevalence of infectious diseases and entrepreneurship: evidence from 125 countries", Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEEE-06-2023-0222
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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