TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Furdas, Marina
AU  - Kohn, Karsten
        TI  - What's the Difference?! Gender, Personality, and the Propensity to Start a Business
        PY  - 2010/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 4778
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp4778
        AB  - Women start fewer businesses than men. The start-up rate among women in Germany falls short of males' start-up rate by one third. We scrutinize this gender gap using individual-level data from the KfW Start-up Monitor, a large-scale population survey on start-up activity in Germany. As a unique feature, the data combine socio-demographic characteristics, entrepreneurship-related attitudes, and general personality traits of both business starters and non-starters. Estimating binary choice models and employing decomposition techniques, we find that gender differences in socio-demographics alone would even be in favor of higher start-up rates among women, while the distribution of personality traits is less favorable for business start-ups among women and explains about one third of the entire gender difference. Most substantially, men opt for a start-up more often even given identical human capital and related endowments. Qualificational policies targeted towards higher educational attainments of potential entrepreneurs do thus not suffice to increase the number of female business starters.
        KW  - entrepreneurship
KW  - gender difference
KW  - start-up propensity
KW  - decomposition analysis
KW  - KfW Start-up Monitor
KW  - Germany
        ER  -