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Does Social Pressure Hinder Entrepreneurship in Africa? The Forced Mutual Help Hypothesis

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  • Alby, Philippe
  • Auriol, Emmanuelle
  • Nguimkeu, Pierre

Abstract

In the absence of a public safety net, wealthy Africans have the social obligation to share their re- sources with their needy relatives in the form of cash transfers and inefficient family hiring. We develop a model of entrepreneurial choice that accounts for this social redistributive constraint. We derive pre- dictions regarding employment choices, productivity, and profitability of firms ran by entrepreneurs of African versus non-African origin. Everything else equal, local firms are over-staffed and less productive than firms owned by nonlocals, which discourages local entrepreneurship. Using data from the manu- facturing sector, we illustrate the theory by structurally estimating the proportion of missing African entrepreneurs. Our estimates, which are suggestive due to the data limitation, vary between 8% and 12.6% of the formal sector workforce. Implications for the role of social protection are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Alby, Philippe & Auriol, Emmanuelle & Nguimkeu, Pierre, 2018. "Does Social Pressure Hinder Entrepreneurship in Africa? The Forced Mutual Help Hypothesis," TSE Working Papers 18-956, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    • Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:32964
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    Cited by:

    1. World Bank Group, 2015. "Tanzania Mainland Poverty Assessment," World Bank Publications - Reports 22021, The World Bank Group.
    2. Eliana Carranza & Aletheia Donald & Florian Grosset & Supreet Kaur, 2022. "The Social Tax: Redistributive Pressure and Labor Supply," NBER Working Papers 30438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Entrepreneurship; Family Solidarity; Formal Sector; Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

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