Policy Papers
Portrait of a Belarusian Entrepreneur
There are three groups of factors that might affect the development of entrepreneurship. The first one includes institutional factors: economic, political and legal institutions that stimulate or hinder the development of the private sector. In particular the literature emphasizes the role of credit institutions in the development of the private sector (Banerjee and Newman, 1993), property rights (Frye and Zhuravskaya, 2000; Roland and Verdier, 2003). The second group includes different sociological factors, such as family background, social networks, values and beliefs. And finally the third one are individual characteristics of a person, including education, intellectual and physical development, risk-taking, greed, and other traits.
This work studies the impact of all the three groups of factors on the development of business activities in Belarus. The incentive for the study is the fact that today despite the fact that the government has repeatedly stressed the importance and need to stimulate private initiative, the development of private entrepreneurship in Belarus is fairly slow and inconsistent.
This research was conducted under the joint project with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) with the financial support of United States Agency for International Development (USAID).