Entrepreneurship in developing countries: can mobile money play a role?

Ablam Estel Apeti (1) , Jean-Louis Combes (1) , Eyah Denise Edoh (1)

1 LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2022-...]

This paper examines the impact of mobile money adoption on entrepreneurship in a large panel of 105 developing countries over the period 2006-2020 using entropy balancing method. Results indicate that countries with mobile money have higher entrepreneurial activities. Specifically, countries with mobile money experienced an increase of 0.35 percentage points in their entrepreneurial activity compared to nonmobile money countries. This result is robust to several robustness tests, including altering the definition of mobile money, the definition of entrepreneurship, placebo tests, adding additional control variables, changing the sample design, and alternative estimation methods such as panel fixed effects, and the GMM system. Furthermore, the heterogeneity tests performed indicate the sensitivity of our results to the intensity of mobile money use, some structural factors such as democracy, conflict, regulatory quality, corruption, financial development, internet, and education.

Mots clés: Mobile money, entrepreneurship, entropy balancing, developing countries

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Ablam Estel Apeti, Jean-Louis Combes, Eyah Denise Edoh. Entrepreneurship in developing countries: can mobile money play a role?. 2023. ⟨hal-04081304⟩