Entrepreneurial Risk and Digital Financial Inclusion: A Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract

The inception of financial technologies (Fintech) has enabled expanded use of financial services. Fintech contributes to financial inclusion and by doing so provides impacts on income inequality, poverty and economic growth. A prospective route of influence exerted by Fintech is to assist economic agents in taking entrepreneurial risks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of digital financial inclusion, as enhanced by FinTech, on entrepreneurial risk. An index for measuring levels of digital financial inclusion was constructed based on variation patterns in several indicators of digital activities. A cross-country model was proposed that relates entrepreneurial risk to digital financial inclusion as well as to a variety of other economic and social factors. Estimation results based on a panel of countries show that digital financial inclusion (0.265), institutional quality (0.169), per capita GDP (0.0456) and education (0.0475) have positive and significant effects on entrepreneurial risk. In contrast, time required to start a business (−0.136) and effective tax rates on capital (−0.494) provide negative and significant effects. In addition, a significant quadratic relationship between entrepreneurial risk and remittances (employee compensation and personal transfers) was found.