Perceived Entrepreneurial Prestige Signals and Entrepreneurship Outcomes: Evidence from Country–Year Panels

Özet

Purpose – This study examines whether status-related social signals are associated with cross-country differences in entrepreneurship, especially when “hard” policies do not translate into youth entry or formal firm creation. Building on Social Cognitive Theory and Institutional Theory, it treats perceived entrepreneurial prestige as two separable signals: societal valuation (SV) and career desirability (CD).
Design/methodology/approach – We compile unbalanced country–year panels from GEM (SV, CD), the OECD (youth self-employment; YSE), and the World Bank (new business density rate; NBDR). The YSE model covers 28 countries (2003–2018; N=257), while the NBDR model covers 45 countries (2006–2018; N=378). We estimate country fixed-effects models with year indicators and country-clustered standard errors, so inference relies on within-country change over time and the estimates are interpreted as associations rather than causal effects.
Results – The two prestige signals do not behave uniformly across outcomes. SV is positively associated with YSE, whereas CD is positively associated with NBDR. The cross-mappings (CD→YSE and SV→NBDR) are not supported. Accordingly, the results point to an outcome-specific pattern rather than a single “prestige increases entrepreneurship” effect.
Discussion – The study clarifies that admiration-based status cues and career-choice attractiveness capture different channels. It also suggests that policy levers should match the targeted margin: role-model salience and status recognition align more with youth entry, while strengthening entrepreneurship as a credible career option aligns more with formal registrations. Because the design is observational and panels are unbalanced, we interpret the estimates as associations and motivate future work on mechanisms and directionality.