2017/03/01 by Saurav Pathak, Etayankara Muralidharan · 98 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Demographic economics #Economic inequality #Economics #Entrepreneurship #Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences #Family Business Performance and Succession #Government (linguistics) #Income distribution #Income inequality metrics #Inequality #Innovation and Socioeconomic Development #Public economics #Social inequality #Social mobility #Social science #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1177/0007650317696069
published in Business & Society 57(6), 1150-1190 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2017/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This article explores the extent to which income inequality and income mobility—both considered indicators of economic inequality and conditions of formal regulatory institutions (government activism)—facilitate or constrain the emergence of social entrepreneurship. Using 77,983 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey of 26 countries, and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, our results from multilevel analyses demonstrate that country-level income inequality increases the likelihood of individual-level engagement in social entrepreneurship, while income mobility decreases this likelihood. Further, income mobility negatively moderates the influence of income inequality on social entrepreneurship, such that the condition of low income mobility and high income inequality is a stronger predictor of social entrepreneurship. We discuss implications and limitations of our study, and we suggest avenues for future research.