particular effects that institutional factors have on female entrepreneurship at different levels. The independent variables include the Women, Business, and the Law measure of legal rights disparities, years of women’s education, and account ownership. The control variable used is gross national income per capita. The descriptions and sources for the dependent and independent variables are included in Table A3 in the appendix.

The Entrepreneurship Database uses the World Bank’s groupings of economies based on income. All economies are divided into three income groupings: low income, middle income and high income. The indicator used for these groupings is gross national income per capita in U.S. dollars, converted from local currency (World Bank 2017). For geographic units, the Entrepreneurship Database also uses the World Bank’s regional groupings. Under this classification, participant economies fall into seven regions: East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), Europe and Central Asia (ECA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Middle East and North Africa (MENA), OECD high-income economies (OECD), South Asia (SAS) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Of the 143 economies participating in the Entrepreneurship Database, 44 economies provided sexdisaggregated data on female and male entrepreneurship. Of these, 15 economies are classified as high income, 24 as middle income, and five as low income. They represent diverse cultural, political, institutional, geographic and socioeconomic environments. Table A4 in the appendix places the 44 economies that provided sex-disaggregated data into 21 groups, determined by their region and gender indicators. Of the 44 economies providing sex-disaggregated data, only 22 provided data on both new female LLC owners and new female sole proprietors. In seven economies, sex-disaggregated data were limited to the number of new female LLC owners and did not include data on sole proprietors. Conversely, 11 economies provided the data on the number of new female sole proprietors but did not provide data on female LLC owners. In one economy, Albania, sex-disaggregated data included the number of LLCs with at least one female business owner, but did not include either the number of new female LLC owners or new female sole proprietors. For 2016, observations related to new female LLC owners include 32 economies, while observations related to new female sole proprietors cover 35 economies.

A limited number of economies provided panel data on the number of new female LLC owners and sole proprietors over the last five years. Specifically, 24 economies reported panel data on the number of new female LLC owners between 2012 and 2016, while 28 economies provided the data on female sole proprietors for the same period. The insufficient coverage of sex-disaggregated data limits empirical analysis of female business entry and suggests the need to expand the collection of time-series data on female entrepreneurship over the coming years. The regression analysis is based on indicators calculated for 2016. The descriptive statistics, including the number of observations available for each indicator, are included in Table A5 in the appendix.

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