A Tale of Two Impacts
Entrepreneurial Action and the Gender-Related Effects of Economic Policy Uncertainty
Key Finding
Economic policy uncertainty does not affect all entrepreneurs equally — its impact on entrepreneurial action operates through gendered mechanisms that existing theory has overlooked.
Overview
This paper investigates how economic policy uncertainty differentially affects entrepreneurial action across gender lines. While uncertainty is typically treated as a uniform environmental condition, this paper demonstrates that its effects on entrepreneurial behavior operate through gendered mechanisms — creating different opportunity structures, risk perceptions, and action tendencies for male and female entrepreneurs.
Contribution to the Research Program
This work connects the macro-environment of uncertainty (a core concern of the Knowledge Problems stream) with the Resource Mobilization stream by showing how structural conditions shape who can mobilize resources and how. It complements the lab's work on Black entrepreneurship by revealing another dimension along which supposedly universal entrepreneurial phenomena operate through differential mechanisms.
Key Insights
- Economic policy uncertainty has asymmetric effects on entrepreneurial action across gender
- These differential effects operate through distinct mechanisms, not merely different magnitudes
- Macro-level uncertainty is not a uniform environmental condition but one that interacts with social structure
- Understanding gendered pathways to entrepreneurial action is essential for both theory and policy