Corruption and entrepreneurship: does gender matter?

Claudia Trentini () and Malinka Koparanova ()
Additional contact information
Claudia Trentini: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Malinka Koparanova: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe

No 2013_1, ECE Discussion Papers Series from UNECE

Abstract: Corruption is a significant factor which determines the quality of the “doing business” environment at large. The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurs’ corrupt behavior by looking at two questions: (1) does gender matter in corrupt behavior and (2) can corruption be an explanatory factor for gender gaps in firm growth. While it is often argued that female entrepreneurs face gender-specific challenges and might have different behaviors based on different ethics and moral standards, it is crucial to seek for empirical evidence at microeconomic level. Our results indicate that women entrepreneurs do have a significant lower propensity to bribe as compared to men entrepreneurs. Looking at the impact of corruption on employment growth, we do find a general negative impact of administrative corruption especially for micro enterprise but a positive one for women entrepreneurs. This is consistent with the fact that the majority of women are micro entrepreneurs; for them it is easier to escape the attention of corrupt officials, but greasing the wheels of state bureaucracy might become necessary and facilitate their firm’s growth.

Keywords: gender; corruption; entrepreneurship; transition economies; development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 J16 L26 O17 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2013-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in United Nations ECE Discussion Paper Series, No. 2013_1

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/oes/disc_papers/ECE_DP_2013-1.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ece:dispap:2013_1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ECE Discussion Papers Series from UNECE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Robert Shelburne ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).