Age of the entrepreneurial decision: Differences among developed, developing, and non- developed countries

Abstract

Although entrepreneurship is widely considered an engine of growth, it is not clear whether policies, de facto, promote it, and knowing which individuals are willing to become entrepreneurs could help in the design of those policies. In this paper, we study how individuals become entrepreneurs at different ages, according to the degree of development of the country of residence. We make use of the GEM 2014 Adult Population Survey data, against a background where social norms are controlled, to find that the relationship between entrepreneurship and age follows an inverted U-shape, according to machine learning techniques, and that younger individuals are the most willing to become entrepreneurs.