We investigated the influence of economic and political institutions on the prevalence rate of formal and informal entrepreneurship across 18 countries in the Asia-Pacific region during the period of 2001-2010. The quality of economic and political institutions was negatively associated with entry into informal entrepreneurship and positively related with entry into formal entrepreneurship. The two types of institutions had a complementary effect on driving entry into formal entrepreneurship, whereas informal entry was influenced only individually by economic and political institutions.

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We examine the relationship between infrastructure provision and poverty alleviation by analysing 500 interviews conducted in serviced and non-serviced slums in India. Using a mixed-method approach of qualitative analysis and regression modelling, we find that infrastructure was associated with a 66% increase in education among females. Service provision increased literacy by 62%, enhanced income by 36%, and reduced health costs by 26%. Evidence suggests that a gender-sensitive consideration of infrastructure is necessary and that a 'one size fits all' approach will not suffice. We provide evidence that infrastructure investment is critical for well-being of slum dwellers and women in particular.

We investigate the impact of country-level labour market regulations on the re-entry decision of experienced entrepreneurs, whereby they become habitual entrepreneurs. Multilevel logit models on entry decisions among 15,709 individuals in 29 European countries show that labour market regulations have a positive influence on the decision to re-enter into entrepreneurship. This positive impact is stronger among individuals holding wage jobs at the time of re-entry compared to those that do not. Our results indicate that novice and habitual entrepreneurs may respond very differently to labour market rigidity. We discuss and provide tentative explanations for these differences and outline potential policy implications.

This paper studies the association between the effectiveness of insolvency regulations and entrepreneurship using multilevel modeling of about 300,000 individuals in 27 countries over the 2005-2010 period. We investigate the relationship between three different measures of Bresolving insolvency^(time, cost, and recovery rate) from the World Bank and four different measures of entrepreneurship from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, controlling for relevant individualand country-level facets. We find that opportunitydriven and innovation-oriented entrepreneurs are more severely affected by onerous insolvency regulations than necessity-motivated entrepreneurs. However, entrepreneurs envisioning rapid employment growth are not affected by onerous insolvency regulations. We discuss contributions to comparative entrepreneurship research and public policy.