The Effect of Economic Risk on Women's Entrepreneurship Activity in Selected Countries of the World

In economic literature, entrepreneurship has been strongly emphasized as one of the key determinants of economic growth and development. Given that almost women make up half of the population of each country, supporting of entrepreneurial activities of this group can play an effective role in Economic growth and development. Thus, one of the paths of women's participation for proceeding of goals of economic development is through entrepreneurship. Although, women's entrepreneurship has significantly different with men's entrepreneurship. women's entrepreneurship are less willing to start or continue entrepreneurial activities because of fear of failure. The low quality of the institutional environment, the increasing fear of failure, and the possibility of uncertainty for achieving expected returns are the result of increased economic risk. Therefore, increasing of economic risk by increasing the possibility of uncertainty for achieving expected returns and increasing fear of failure will reduce women's entrepreneurship. For this purpose, the present study seeks to investigate the effect of economic risk on world women's total early-stage entrepreneurship activity in selected countries of the world during 2008-2015 using the Generalized Method of Moments(GMM) method. The results of this study indicate that improving economic risk has a positive and significant effect on women's entrepreneurship. Also, variables of financial development, human capital index, direct foreign investment have a positive and significant effect on women's entrepreneurship.