Necessity or opportunity? Government size, tax policy, corruption, and implications for entrepreneurship

Government size, corruption, and tax policy can influence allocation towards necessity or opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. Using a comparative multi-source sample across 52 countries during 2005–2015, we apply a mixed-process estimation of the simultaneously unrelated system of equations and unpack these heterogeneous and complex effects. Interestingly, our results show that the influence of tax policy and corruption on necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship depends on government size. Our results hold for numerous robustness analyses. Plain English summary Institutions matter for the choice of opportunity and necessity-driven entrepreneurship. Government size, the level of corruption, and tax policy directly affect entrepreneurs’ motivation and incentives. We study 52 countries during 2005–2015 to find out to what extent tax rate, corruption, and a range of government expenditure change the allocation of necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. Our main implications are for (1) Research: Formal and informal institutions need to be considered when studying entrepreneurship allocation, particularly in an emerging and developing country context. Results suggest that the impact of the same institutional settings and informal institutions such as corruption on necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship is not uniform in size and scope and have different magnitude. The effect of government expenditure on necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship is not ubiquitous. (2) Management: The broader institutional context affects allocation of entrepreneurship, and potential entrepreneurs can consider how corruption in particular can affect them. (3) Policy: Policymakerscan measure the extent to which opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship are likely to change, when they make changes to tax policy, resources for public spending, and take anti-corruption measures.