[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/msm/wpaper/2014-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Access and use of ICT in female-owned SMEs in selected Arab Countries and Brazil: A comparative study

Author

Listed:
  • Mona Farid Badran, PhD

    (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo, Egypt)

Abstract
This research paper aims to present a comparative empirical study, to investigate the impact that ICT plays on empowering women entrepreneurs in 5 developing/ emerging countries, namely Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, and Brazil. The World Bank's Investment Climate Assessment Surveys (ICA), are the primary source for data, for the four Arab countries, and Brazil. The ICA database provides comparable enterprise level data based on similar sampling techniques. The results obtained from the empirical study reveal that in the selected Arab countries, the increase in female owned SMEs is associated with a decrease in the Internal Rate of Return. However, when we control for ICT in terms of ICT index constructed using the Principal component analysis technique (PCA), the female owned SMEs becomes statistically insignificant, as well as the ICT index. This implies that IRR is negatively associated with the female owners of the SME, and there is a no association between IRR and the access and use of ICT. In Brazil, however, neither gender nor ICT played any role in the profitability of SMEs. However, as for the other measure for economic performance, namely the labor intensity, the findings reveal that in the selected Arab countries, the ICT index has a positive, statically significant, association with laborintensity, while in Brazil the usage of a Website has a negative, statistically significant, association with the labor-intensity.

Suggested Citation

  • Mona Farid Badran, PhD, 2014. "Access and use of ICT in female-owned SMEs in selected Arab Countries and Brazil: A comparative study," Working Papers 2014/12, Maastricht School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:msm:wpaper:2014/12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web2.msm.nl/RePEc/msm/wpaper/MSM-WP2014-12.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fatma El-Hamidi, 2011. "How Do Women Entrepreneurs Perform? Empirical Evidence from Egypt," Working Papers 621, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2011.
    2. Susanna Wolf & Shyamal Chowdhury, 2003. "Use of ICTs and the Economic Performance of SMEs in East Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2003-06, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Eduardo Lora & Francesca Castellani, 2014. "Entrepreneurship in Latin America : A Step Up the Social Ladder?," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 16347.
    4. Elena Bardasi & Shwetlena Sabarwal & Katherine Terrell, 2011. "How do female entrepreneurs perform? Evidence from three developing regions," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 417-441, November.
    5. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    6. W. Edward STEINMUELLER, 2001. "ICTs and the possibilities for leapfrogging by developing countries," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 140(2), pages 193-210, June.
    7. Fatma El-Hamidi, 2011. "How Do Women Entrepreneurs Perform? Empirical Evidence from Egypt," Working Papers 23, AlmaLaurea Inter-University Consortium.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Isa, Filzah Md & Muhammad, Nik Maheran Nik & Ahmad, Azizah & Noor, Shaista & Institute of Research, Asian, 2021. "Effect of ICT on Women Entrepreneur Business Performance: Case of Malaysia," OSF Preprints yqkxf, Center for Open Science.
    2. Ananya Goswami & Sraboni Dutta, 2016. "E-Commerce Adoption by Women Entrepreneurs in India: An Application of the UTAUT Model," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 6(2), pages 440-454, December.
    3. Badran, Mona Farid, 2018. "Digital Platforms in Developing Countries: "A Case-Study of Jumia Egypt"," 29th European Regional ITS Conference, Trento 2018 184929, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles Ackah & Richard Osei Bofah & Derek Asuman, 2017. "Who Are Africa’S Entrepreneurs? Comparative Evidence From Ghana And Uganda," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(04), pages 1-23, December.
    2. Seamus Murphy & Diksha Arora & Froukje Kruijssen & Cynthia McDougall & Paula Kantor, 2020. "Gender-based market constraints to informal fish retailing: Evidence from analysis of variance and linear regression," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-16, March.
    3. Brixiová, Zuzana & Kangoye, Thierry & Said, Mona, 2020. "Training, human capital, and gender gaps in entrepreneurial performance," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 367-380.
    4. François Seck Fall & Luis Orozco & Al‐Mouksit Akim, 2020. "Adoption and use of mobile banking by low‐income individuals in Senegal," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 569-588, May.
    5. Cyprian Amutabi & Anthony Wambugu, 2020. "Determinants of labor productivity among SMEs and large‐sized private service firms in Kenya," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 32(4), pages 591-604, December.
    6. Hala El-Said & Mahmoud Al-Said & Chahir Zaki, 2015. "Trade and access to finance of SMEs: is there a nexus?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(39), pages 4184-4199, August.
    7. Bertrand, Jérémie & Perrin, Caroline, 2022. "Girls Just Wanna Have Funds? The effect of women-friendly legislation on female-led firms’ access to credit," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    8. Rajesh Raj S. N. & Subash Sasidharan, 2018. "Does the Caste of the Firm Owner Play a Role in Access to Finance for Small Enterprises? Evidence from India," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 56(4), pages 267-296, December.
    9. Hala El-Said & Mahmoud Al-Said & Chahir Zaki, 2013. "What Determines the Access to Finance of SMEs? Evidence from the Egyptian Case," Working Papers 752, Economic Research Forum, revised May 2013.
    10. Nesma Ali & Boris Najman, 2016. "Informal Competition, Firms Productivity and Policy Reforms in Egypt," Working Papers 1025, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2016.
    11. Hala Abou-Ali & Reham Rizk, 2015. "MSEs Informality and Productivity: Evidence from Egypt," Working Papers 916, Economic Research Forum, revised May 2015.
    12. Hadi Salehi Esfahani & Roksana Bahramitash, 2015. "Gender, Enterprise Ownership, and Labor Allocation in MENA: the Roles of Islam, Oil, and Government Policies," Working Papers 951, Economic Research Forum, revised Sep 2015.
    13. Darima Fotheringham & Michael A. Wiles, 2023. "The effect of implementing chatbot customer service on stock returns: an event study analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 802-822, July.
    14. Song, Wei-Ling & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2016. "TARP announcement, bank health, and borrowers’ credit risk," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 22-32.
    15. Raymundo M. Campos-Vázquez, 2013. "Efectos de los ingresos no reportados en el nivel y tendencia de la pobreza laboral en México," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(2), pages 23-54, November.
    16. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    17. Paul W. Miller & Barry R. Chiswick, 2002. "Immigrant earnings: Language skills, linguistic concentrations and the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(1), pages 31-57.
    18. Chul‐Woo Kwon & Peter F. Orazem & Daniel M. Otto, 2006. "Off‐farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 34(1), pages 59-67, January.
    19. Jonathan Gruber & Aaron Yelowitz, 1999. "Public Health Insurance and Private Savings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1249-1274, December.
    20. Jean-Louis Arcand & Linguère M'Baye, 2013. "Braving the waves: the role of time and risk preferences in illegal migration from Senegal," CERDI Working papers halshs-00855937, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    SMEs; females; Arab countries; Brazil; ICT; ICA survey;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:msm:wpaper:2014/12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Maud de By (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/msmmmnl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.