Entrepreneurship in Pakistan: A comparative assessment of the role played by perceptions

This paper conducts a preliminary assessment of how perceptions influence the decision to opt for entrepreneurship, and whether they vary across selected countries. The central focus is Pakistan: the country’s outcomes are duly contrasted with results from Bangladesh, an amalgamated grouping of factor driven economies, and a broad sample of global economies. A pooled dataset of 69 countries surveyed in 2010 and 2011 by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is utilized. The model takes perceptual factors into account, in addition to the traditional demographic variables which dominate the literature. The results indicate that, globally, three perceptual variables namely opportunity awareness, personally knowing an entrepreneur, and self-confidence in one’s own knowledge, skills and abilities increase the likelihood of a person turning into an entrepreneur; the latter two variables are also correlated with the decision to pursue entrepreneurship in Pakistan. However, there are differences in the impact of other perceptual variables like opportunity awareness and fear of failure and also among some standard demographic variables across the set of countries which constitute the research.