Evaluating the institutional environment for entrepreneurship: A cross-national study on Arab countries.

摘要

This study is to identify the nature of and variance among the institutional environments of eleven Arab countries, which includes Egypt, Tunisia, UAE, Syria, Jordon, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, West Bank and Gaza Strip and Saudi Arabia to help explore the differences in the institutional settings for the domain of entrepreneurship in these nations. I first validate an instrument for measuring country institutional profiles for the promotion of entrepreneurship using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM Adult Population Survey 2009 & 2010) data set of 17,627 individual of these countries including 9,405 male and 8,224 female. Results from the confirmatory factor analysis suggest high reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity of the instrument. Further, I find important differences in the two studied dimensions (cognitive and normative) of the institutional profiles across the eleven developing economies, reflecting their distinctive cultural norms and values, traditions, and institutional heritage in promoting entrepreneurship. Second, I more deeply probe the role of institutions on entrepreneurial activity in Arab countries. I develop the instrument introducing and testing a relatively new, multidimensional measure of a country's institutional environment. I test this measure in a setting of three Arab countries including Egypt, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor expert's 2010 data set; the data covers 106 entrepreneurship experts (36 from Egypt, 36 from Tunisia and 34 from Saudi Arabia). Implications for future research and public policy are also discussed.