Liberté économique et entrepreneuriat en ASS : une approche par le genre[Economic freedom and entrepreneurship in SSA: a gender approach]

This study investigates the influence of institutional pressures on the level of entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It assumes that in sub-Saharan Africa, countries with the highest levels of entrepreneurship rates tend to have the highest levels of economic freedom. Data are on 37 SSA countries and come from The Heritage Foundation and the World Data Indicator. Equations are estimated using the ordinary least squares method. The main results show that a less restrictive institutional environment tends to encourage entrepreneurship. Low levels of fiscal pressure significantly encourage entrepreneurship up to 114% of the levels of tax freedom. The results also show that women entrepreneurs are much more sensitive to tax pressure than their male counterparts. Finally, the results show that entrepreneurs tend to evolve in the informal sector, or to submit false accounting balances to the tax authorities in order to avoid tax burden (Women entrepreneurs in this case being either more entrepreneurial than their male counterparts or more Honest), which has a negative impact on their ability to benefit from external funding. The main recommendation goes to governments, they must reduce the tax pressures linked to small activities. And to do this, they must order microeconomic studies to determine which taxes to reduce and at which level.