A Replication Study of "Business as Plan B: Institutional foundations of gender inequality in entrepreneurship across 24 industrialized countries."

This study conducts a hybrid replication of Thébaud's (2015) investigation of institutional foundations of gender inequality in entrepreneurship across 24 industrialized countries. We combine exact replication—by designing our own survey instrument following the original methodology—with constructive replication by extending the sample to include non-industrialized countries. This extension tests the generalizability of Thébaud's institutional explanations beyond industrialized contexts and addresses a significant scope limitation in the original work. While the original study analyzed Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data from 2001-2008, our contemporary data collection necessarily reflects current conditions, which allows us to assess whether the institutional mechanisms identified by Thébaud remain operative in today's entrepreneurial landscape. Our custom survey design reduces measurement error and provides better control over data quality compared to secondary data sources. We document all methodological differences from the original study, conduct power analyses to ensure adequate statistical confidence, and perform cross-country adjustments to address potential threats to validity arising from sample heterogeneity between industrialized and non-industrialized settings. This replication adds scientific value by simultaneously testing the robustness and temporal stability of influential findings while examining boundary conditions and alternative mechanisms in diverse economic contexts.