Natalia Vershinina
email: nvershinina@audencia.com

Gideon Markman
email: gideon.markman@colostate.edu

Liang Han
email: liang.han@henley.ac.uk

Peter Rodgers
email: p.rodgers@soton.ac.uk

John Kitching
email: j.kitching@kingston.ac.uk

Nigar Hashimzade
email: nigar.hashimzade@brunel.ac.uk

Prof Rowena Barrett
email: rowena.barrett@qut.edu.au

Prof Vershinina Natalia

Prof Gideon Markman

Prof Han Liang

Prof Peter Rodgers

Prof. John Kitching

Gendered regulations and SME performance in transition economies

Keywords: Culture, Regulations, Gender, SMEs, Entrepreneurship JEL: J16 J24 L26 L51 P2

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

INTRODUCTION

This study investigates the intersection of culture, regulations, and gender and the implications of this intersection for the performance of women-led SMEs in transition economies. Culture, regulations, and gender are of course distinct but, because they are highly intertwined and mutually reinforcing, it is difficult to unpack their discrete effects on individuals and firms. Culture reflects collective values and beliefs, regulations are overriding rules enforced by higher authorities, and gender influences our attitudes, assumptions, and norms of interactions. Although culture is a more subtle construct because it is anchored in tacit attitudes, mindsets, and societal norms, it does shape and is inextricably linked to and bounded by gendered values and regulations-a wider institutional net underpinned by authoritative governance principles. Being impalpable and lacking central governance, culture evolves autonomously and tacitly; however, like regulations and gender, it sets enduring codes of conduct and values, molds attitudes and actions, and it imprints guiding principles in relation to what is encouraged, accepted, discouraged, and/or rejected [START_REF] Johnson | The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User's Guide to Sociological Language[END_REF][START_REF] Welter | Contextualizing entrepreneurship: Conceptual challenges and ways forward[END_REF]). Thus, all three elements as visible and invisible 'enforcement' mechanisms influence choices and actions at the personal and organizational levels.

Given these intertwined and mutually reinforcing dynamics, building and expanding upon gendered institutions theory seems suited to studying the culture-regulations-gender triad. Although gender is an individual-level construct, the theory explains that it is deeply yet subtly embedded in both governing institutions and culture, and, as such, it impacts firm processes and outcomes, including performance. With this understanding in mind, our study aims at addressing two main gaps in the extant literature. First, research on gender differences rarely considers business regulations as gendered modalities (that propagate gender inequality); due to this omission, the influence of culture, regulations and gender on firm performance has hitherto been underestimated [START_REF] Elam | Gendered institutions and cross-national patterns of business creation for men and women[END_REF][START_REF] Johnson | The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User's Guide to Sociological Language[END_REF].

Second, the literature on business regulations is growing, but research on how individuals experience and respond to regulations is limited. Moreover, we do not yet know whether regulations pass gender bias and if so, how this transfer of bias correlates with firm performance. Thus, we challenge the dogma that business regulations are gender neutral, and our research questions, are: "Do women and men experience and react to business regulations the same way?" and "What are the implications to the performance of their firms?" To address the above questions, we use data drawn from a longitudinal (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014), firm-level panel representing 27 transition economies (Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia) in which-at least historically-gender differences were less pronounced. By shedding light on the culture-regulations-gender triad, our study makes several contributions, two of which deserve brief mention. First, our study reveals that business regulations are in fact gendered. That is, women experience business regulations as highly consequential to their SMEs' performance, whereas men experience regulations as inconsequential to their SME's performance. Second, we uncovered that when women respond to regulatory enforcers the performance of their SMEs suffers, while men's response is related to better SMEs performance. Furthermore, the finding that, regardless of country effects, women experience and respond to regulations differently (from men) elucidates our thesis that regulations are gendered.

The rest of the article unfolds as follows. The background section surveys the culture-regulations-gender triad in transition economies and the entrepreneurship and SMEs research. The theory section elaborates on gendered institutions theory and highlights gender differences in the context of SMEs. The methods section describes the study's dataset, analyses, results and findings, and the article concludes with the findings, contributions, and future research.

BACKGROUND

To bring context to the culture-regulations-gender triad, we divide this section into two segments. We start by explaining the unique nature of the effect of gender in transition economies, and then describe the entrepreneurship-SME connection. Our focal area is gender, but of course, we also weave in attention to cultural differences.

Gender and Transition Economies

While studying various types of regulations, we were surprised that this scholarship affords scarce attention to gender inequality and cultural differences [START_REF] Bardasi | How do female entrepreneurs perform? Evidence from three developing regions[END_REF][START_REF] Estrin | Institutions and female entrepreneurship[END_REF], which explains, at least in part, our decision to study this topical area. We also noticed that most of the research on regulations and firm performance had been conducted in developed economies, where institutional regimes and regulatory environments are well-established, and women and men are equally protected-at least under the law. While research on developing economies is on the rise, there is still a dearth of studies on regulations and firm performance in transition economies, which are often characterized by challenging institutional contexts and Balkanized cultural settings [START_REF] Bruton | New venture performance in transition economies from different institutional perspectives[END_REF].

To offer some context, the former Soviet republics had historically aspired to ensure employment for all, with women and men working alongside each other [START_REF] Aidis | Institutions and entrepreneurship development in Russia: A comparative perspective[END_REF].

After the USSR broke up in 1991, however, the transition process started to affect women and men differently, revealing cultural distinctions and causing economic disparities and difficulties, and increasingly, gender inequalities became less tolerable [START_REF] Manolova | Institutional environments for entrepreneurship: Evidence from emerging economies in Eastern Europe[END_REF]. For instance, between 1996 and 2006, the gender wage gap in Belarus doubled, and women experienced increased segregation to low-wage industries [START_REF] Pastore | When does transition increase the gender wage gap?[END_REF]. The South Caucasus nations (Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia) saw a sharp decline in fertility and a significant increase in the ratio of boys' to girls' births, which has often been attributed to a preference for sons [START_REF] Das Gupta | Missing girls' in the south Caucasus countries: Trends, possible causes, and policy options[END_REF][START_REF] Dudwick | Missing Women in the South Caucasus: Local Perceptions and Proposed Solutions[END_REF].

On the other hand, and in contrast with developed economies, education, especially math and science, is still associated with gender parity in many transition countries, with girls even outperforming boys in a few countries [START_REF] Legewie | School context and the gender gap in educational achievement[END_REF]UNICEF 2013). We view transition economies as expressly suitable for testing whether gender effects persist across and in even supersede varied cultural differences-which is one of our aims.

To recap, transition economies represent a context in which the effects of gender and culture on firm performance are especially unclear. On the one hand, they have a strong egalitarian heritage; the power of the state seems especially high; they value education (in which women often thrive) and of course math, engineering, and science-based skills are foundational for a successful career, productive labor market, and strong economy [START_REF] Bliss | Supporting women entrepreneurs in transitioning economies[END_REF][START_REF] Buser | Gender, competitiveness, and career choices[END_REF][START_REF] Dilli | How institutions and gender differences in education shape entrepreneurial activity: A cross-national perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Smallbone | The Role of Government in SME Development in Transition Countries[END_REF]. On the other hand, their transition, cultural freedom, and women emancipation have resurrected tremendous gender inequality. We see these forces as boundary conditions that afford a rare opportunity to study how gender relates to firm performance across distinct cultural settings.

Entrepreneurship and SMEs

We also use this background section to further motivate the study by unearthing some limitations related to the growing body of research on the effects of gender on entrepreneurship and SMEs. For example, a narrow focus on 'gender as a variable', where samples are merely split into men and women-while neglecting to consider either the wider and nuanced influence of context (such as gendered regulation)-can mask significant gender-related effects [START_REF] Cromie | Motivations of aspiring male and female entrepreneurs[END_REF][START_REF] Watson | Biological sex, stereotypical sex-roles, and SME owner characteristics[END_REF]. Indeed, micro-level studies often show how, in comparison to men, women start and operate smaller businesses [START_REF] Fairlie | Gender differences in business performance: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners survey[END_REF], lack growth intention and ambition [START_REF] Mueller | A cross cultural study of gender-role orientation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy[END_REF], struggle to access finance [START_REF] Mccracken | Women's entrepreneurship: Closing the gender gap in access to financial and other services and in social entrepreneurship[END_REF], select less profitable and over-populated sectors [START_REF] Loscocco | Gender and small business success: An inquiry into women's relative disadvantage[END_REF], and face family-business tradeoffs [START_REF] Minniti | Being in someone else's shoes: The role of gender in nascent entrepreneurship[END_REF]. In many countries, women face barriers to starting businesses due to suppressive cultural and religious beliefs [START_REF] Jamali | Constraints and opportunities facing women entrepreneurs in developing countries: A relational perspective[END_REF]Pavlovich and Markman, in press) and, even in progressive societies, the reconciliation of family and business commitments often falls predominantly on women [START_REF] Jennings | Work-family interface experiences and coping strategies: Implications for entrepreneurship research and practice[END_REF]. Studies also show that women face more barriers than men while building career experience and business networks [START_REF] Mcadam | Stories from the field: Women's networking as gender capital in entrepreneurial ecosystems[END_REF], which, of course, undermines their entrepreneurial aspirations [START_REF] Thebaud | Gender and entrepreneurship as a career choice: Do self-assessments of ability matter[END_REF]2015).

Research on broader contextual factors focuses on industry or sector size [START_REF] Estrin | Institutions and female entrepreneurship[END_REF][START_REF] Reynolds | Global entrepreneurship monitor: data collection design and implementation 1998-2003[END_REF], national wealth, unemployment rates, economic growth or freedom [START_REF] Verheul | Explaining female and male entrepreneurship at the country level[END_REF], gender roles [START_REF] Marques | The routineness of tasks, gender and culture in entrepreneurship[END_REF], education [START_REF] Dilli | How institutions and gender differences in education shape entrepreneurial activity: A cross-national perspective[END_REF], and human and social capital [START_REF] Brush | Growthoriented women entrepreneurs and their businesses: A global research perspective[END_REF]. To be clear, such scholarship greatly advances our appreciation of gender differences in entrepreneurship, but it rarely considers highly burdening systemic, macro-level factors as root causes of such effects.

Our concern is that the influence of gender, especially as it oozes into society via regulations and culture (or perhaps because it hides in plain sight), is seldom addressed [START_REF] Brush | Women entrepreneurs and the global environment for growth: a research perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Bullough | Research on women in international business and management: Then, now, and next[END_REF][START_REF] De Bruin | Introduction to the special issue: Towards building cumulative knowledge on women's entrepreneurship[END_REF][START_REF] Terjesen | Gender and new venture creation[END_REF].

Joining others, we evince that furthering the understanding of root causes of performance differences may require entrepreneurship scholars to consider the gendered institutions hypothesis-in our case, that regulations might dispatch and ratify gender biases [START_REF] Henry | Gender and entrepreneurship research: A review of methodological approaches[END_REF][START_REF] Marlow | Gendering Entrepreneurial Behaviour[END_REF][START_REF] Marlow | Gender and entrepreneurship: Advancing debate and challenging myths; exploring the mystery of the under-performing female entrepreneur[END_REF]. We theorize that business regulations perpetuate cultural and gender inequality, thus causing men and women to experience and react to regulations differently, and this line of work is important because it explains, at least in part, why gender effects correlate with different SME performance levels even across countries and cultures.

THEORY DEVELOPMENT AND HYPOTHESES

Business Regulations and SME Financial Performance

The relationship between business regulations and a firm financial performance is complex because of the former's diverse nature: how regulations are created, when and where they are deployed, and how they are enforced. Regulations also have diverse goals-e.g., to protect employee rights, elevate consumer safety, preserve the environment, ensure fair competition, or curtail excessive influence of business on society, to name a few.

Regulations can also be either permissive or restrictive and their cost is rarely trivial.

Business regulations can emphasize financial, social or environmental performance [START_REF] Aragón-Correa | The effects of mandatory and voluntary regulatory pressures on firms' environmental strategies: A review and recommendations for future research[END_REF]; for instance, research on heavily polluting industries reports that, although regulations are burdening, they can elevate both environmental and financial performance over time [START_REF] Shen | Does environmental performance affect financial performance? Evidence from Chinese listed companies in heavily polluting industries[END_REF]. Given the diversity in business regulations and variety of performance parameters, it is not surprising that some studies report regulations as being associated with depressed firm performance, while others find the opposite. Our review of this literature corroborates mixed associations between regulations and firm financial performance, but the main takeaway is that regardless of culture or gender, business regulations (whether permissive or restrictive) are almost always operationally disruptive and financially costly [START_REF] Fletcher | A small business perspective on regulation in the UK[END_REF]Kitching et al. 2015a[START_REF] Kitching | The contradictory consequences of regulation: The influence of filing abbreviated accounts on UK small company performance[END_REF][START_REF] Kitching | A burden on business? Reviewing the evidence base on regulation and small-business performance[END_REF].

Regulations are helpful when they support sound business principles, create level playing fields, suppress unfair competition, prevent unsafe operations or unethical practices, and are reasonable-e.g., impartial banking and loan requirements, equitable protection from liability, and, of course, the unbiased rule of law. An example of such a regulation is the US 2019 Equality Act; a gender equality law that shields individuals from discrimination across diverse areas, including employment, housing, credit, education, public services, federally funded programs, and jury service. Although they are often seen as a hindrance, regulatory constraints can have a positive effect on social well-being or bring environmental benefitse.g., gender equality laws increase the number and diversity of job candidates, while restrictive environmental legislation improves fuel consumption, emission, and safety standards.

We do not question the noble goals of many, perhaps most, regulations, but we do notice that the association between business regulations and firm financial performance is quite complex. One obvious issue is that the effects of regulations depend on many factors, including cultural, political, and legal contexts in which they are created and enforced. Of course, firms face many, often interdependent regulatory requirements and isolating the distinct effect of one policy from those of others is not straightforward. A second issue is that regulations have diverse goals, a heterogeneity that too creates research challenges. As theory and measurement go hand in hand, defining the types of regulations is a precondition to empirically testing their effects. We focus on business regulations, especially on SMEs' ability to connect to the wider business ecosystem, so we bound out others, including global, social and environmental regulations; health, safety and antitrust rules; and tax and tariff policies.

In this study, we elevate awareness to the consequences that regulations create because of their disproportionate impact on small enterprises, which are appreciably more vulnerable than their larger counterparts.1 Smaller firms, such as SMEs and microenterprises, experience regulations as intrusive, as they divert scarce resources, distract valuable managerial bandwidth, impede operational flow, and interfere with customer acquisition. Furthermore, violations of regulatory policies often elicit hefty fines and even greater disruptive scrutiny. Scholars argue that large enterprises routinely set policies, and in effect "regulate" smaller businesses [START_REF] Van Loo | The new gatekeepers: Private firms as public enforcers[END_REF]. Compliance studies have demonstrated that regulations entail substantial administrative and psychological costs, even deterring newventure formation and reducing investment in innovation [START_REF] Chittenden | A question of perspective: Impact assessment and the perceived costs and benefits of new regulations for SMEs[END_REF].

Estimates show that, in 2008, one out of three American workers required a governmentissued license or certificate to earn a living, up from one out of 20 in the 1950s [START_REF] Kleiner | Analyzing the extent and influence of occupational licensing on the labor market[END_REF].

The liabilities of smallness and newness suggest that-independent of cultural differences-regulatory requirements encumber microenterprises and SMEs appreciably more than they impede large firms. The small scale of the former makes them appreciably more vulnerable than larger, better-endowed enterprises, which can spread the regulatory costs across their high-value, large-volume offerings, or business units [START_REF] Markman | Small entrants and large incumbents: A framework of micro entry[END_REF]. Indeed, regulations have a disproportionately negative impact on entrepreneurs and SMEs (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation 2017). To be fair, advocates argue that, on balance, unregulated business activities are costlier to society as they cause externalities such as environmental harm, defaunation and labor abuses. We acknowledge such adverse effects and the need for regulations, but society, firms, and especially individuals carry different financial power. For example, regulators can often overreach to the point of requiring would-be entrepreneurs to vest thousands of hours in costly, unpaid trainings and certification, including for low-risk professions (interior designers, tour guides). It is also worth noting that, over the last century, the total number, reach, and complexity of business regulations-and the tightness of their enforcement-have grown and intensified in every economy. This complexity raises an important concern about the invisible costs and unintended consequences of business regulations to SMEs across nations and cultures.

Seeking to consolidate this debate, our review of the literature reveals three converging facts: (i) business regulations are vital, but they tend to complicate operations and escalate cost; (ii) the tension between regulations and businesses is weighty and growing; and

(iii) regulations are especially onerous for microenterprises, SMEs, minorities, and disadvantaged individuals.

Given this discussion, the absence of theory, inconsistent empirical evidence, and the need to clarify the cost-benefit analysis of regulations, we make a baseline prediction that business regulations will, in general, have a negative effect on the financial performance of SMEs. This prediction integrates various arguments. First, that the growing number and intrusiveness of business regulations and the operational disruption they cause mean that entrepreneurs and SME owners are forced to divert already scarce resources to ensure compliance, sidetracking them from investing in employees and growing their enterprises.

Second, regulations, which are developed and ratified by lobbyists and politicians, adopted by bureaucrats, and imposed by local enforcers, have unintended consequences that often wreak havoc on the most vulnerable players-namely, entrepreneurs and SMEs [START_REF] Hunt | Intergenerational fairness and the crowding out effects of sell-intended environmental policy[END_REF]. We thus formulate the following baseline hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Business regulations will be negatively associated with SME financial performance (all else being equal).

Gender Effects

Recognizing that the consideration of the mere direct effects of regulations is often too simplistic, scholars see public policies as involving intricate processes and interactions among stakeholders, whose reaction is often based on whether they stand to benefit or lose from said regulations [START_REF] Kalt | Capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics[END_REF][START_REF] Noll | Let them make toll calls: A state regulator's lament[END_REF][START_REF] Peltzman | Toward a more general theory of regulation[END_REF][START_REF] Posner | Taxation by regulation[END_REF][START_REF] Stigler | The theory of economic regulation[END_REF]. To better appreciate the effects of regulations, we consider two gender effects-one that is based on women's and men's experience of regulations, and another that accounts for their informal responses. We also use this opportunity to more formally introduce gendered institutions theory and redirect attention to entrepreneurship and SMEs.

Gender Effects: How Women and Men Experience Regulations

Used primarily in sociology and political science, gendered institutions theory is applicable to our topical area because it elevates awareness to institutions as forces that legitimize and perpetuate gender bias and inequality. The theory explains that women face institutional barriers because culturally embedded gender differences infiltrate and influence daily activities, social life, and economic infrastructure [START_REF] Acker | From sex roles to gendered institutions[END_REF][START_REF] Elam | Gendered institutions and cross-national patterns of business creation for men and women[END_REF]. The theory does not blame men or women for gender inequality; rather, it explains that regulations subtly and often unintentionally acclimate and desensitize us to discrimination-e.g., masculine hegemony in the law enforcement sector [START_REF] Shelley | Gendered institutions and gender roles: Understanding the experiences of women in policing[END_REF]. Applying this logic to business, some of the barriers and constraints that women entrepreneurs face stem from gendered cultural values, norms, and customs [START_REF] Baughn | The normative context for women's participation in entrepreneurship: A multicountry study[END_REF]). Hence, we use gendered institutions logic to explain that regulations are constructed, supported, and reinforced by a dominant culture that is often blind to its own gender biases and inequalities.

As noted, gender disparities are not a new phenomenon; however, for completeness, we share recent evidence on this topic. A World Bank study catalogued thousands of legal restrictions worldwide, from legislation that forces women to get permission (from a male family member) to open a bank account, to rules that exclude women from certain jobs and even grant them unequal property rights. 2 To illustrate, in 2009, a St. Petersburg woman who applied for a subway driver position was turned down because the law prohibits women from holding that job. Even a challenge to the Russian Federation's Supreme Court failed to make this gender discrimination illegal. Subway driving is not the only example of ratified injustices; truck drivers in agriculture; freight train conductors; deckhands (boatswain, skipper, and all denominations of sailor) on ships are just a few of the 456 jobs that are inaccessible to women in Russia. Finally, to appreciate how subtly gender bias infiltrates our 2 Women, Business and the Law, 2016. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/555061519930693642/WBL2016-Key-Findings-EN.pdf (accessed May 5, 2020) lives, it is worth noting how languages that adhere to gender-differentiated pronouns are correlated with wider gender gaps in entrepreneurial activities [START_REF] Hechavarría | More than words: Do gendered linguistic structures widen the gender gap in entrepreneurial activity?[END_REF].

Naturally, research continues to improve our understanding of gender inequality across cultures, but gendered institutions theory points to a root cause of such inequality-that gender bias imprints itself on societal infrastructure.

Carrying this logic further, we theorize that when gender bias permeates the lives of individuals, this bias can pass on and affect their enterprises too. In fact, when a society features built-in gender-based bias, barriers or inequities, it undermines, stigmatizes, and inhibits the engagement of women in diverse contexts, including entrepreneurial pursuits.

And, when institutions and regulations propagate gender bias-instead of abolishing it-said regulations become more consequential for women and their SMEs than for men. The thesis that women and men experience regulations differently is grounded in their asymmetric encounters with governmental bodies. Indeed, an annual survey conducted on a sample of 32,200 respondents shows a chronic trust inequality; i.e., that, year after year, women continue to exhibit the greatest distrust towards government institutions-more than toward the media or businesses (Edelman Trust Barometer 2020; [START_REF] Gustafson | Gender Differences in risk perception: Theoretical and methodological perspectives[END_REF].

The conceptual expansion we hope to make, then, is that if regulations are gendered, then women, more so than men, experience severe consequences of regulations not only at the personal level but also to their enterprises. We theorize that because women face more biases, they are keenly aware of the consequence of incompliance, and as business leaders they surely appreciate the impact of regulations on their SME performance. In contrast, men rarely experience gender bias and only seldomly appreciate how far-reaching regulatory institutions can be in propagating inequality. In fact, men trust that, should an issue arise, they will 'work the system' and this dismissive approach to regulations erodes the performance of their SMEs.

Fairness research features a similar division between initial conditions and outcomes, which explains why procedural and distributive justice theories predict that when individuals face biases-women and men alike-they consider governing bodies as responsible for said biases (Diehlet al. 2018;[START_REF] Goldman | Toward an understanding of employment discrimination claiming: An integration of organizational justice and social information processing theories[END_REF][START_REF] Karriker | Organizational justice and organizational citizenship behavior: A mediated multifoci model[END_REF]. Because women are more planful, vigilant and proactive, and less trusting of institutions, they take a more preemptive stance towards regulations and thus enjoy a higher SMEs performance. That is, women hardly ever experience regulations as equitable or fair, and are keenly aware of their firms' vulnerability to requirements and costs related to incompliance; accordingly, they take regulations very seriously and as a result the performance of their SMEs improves. Thus, we formulate the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2a: Women's experience with regulations will be associated with improved SMEs' performance, whereas men's experience with regulations will be associated with declined SMEs' performance.

Interestingly, while women' concerns about regulations assist their SMEs' performance (as explained above), they often have no sway on how business regulations are developed and deployed. The rationale here is consistent with that used above: women experience institutions as male-made and male-dominated outfits that create and sustain gender bias; therefore, they prefer to proactively address regulatory requirements at the frontend than to reactively engage enforcers at the backend. Consistent with a self-fulfilling prophecy, we predict that women's experience of regulations will negatively moderate the already negative association between said regulations and SME performance. We make a similar prediction for men. As acknowledged, men rarely reflect on gender bias in general and as SME owners, they lack the political clout to influence how business regulations are developed or implemented [START_REF] Van Loo | The new gatekeepers: Private firms as public enforcers[END_REF]. For this reason, we predict that men too experience regulations as negatively moderating the association between regulations and SME performance. Stated formally:

Hypothesis 2b: The way women and men experience regulations will negatively moderate the already negative association between regulations and SME performance.

Gender Effects: Responses to Regulatory Enforcers

Another contribution we hope to make is to study how SME owners react to regulations, and because women and men experience regulations differently, we theorize that their responses will too diverge. Regulations are obdurate policies bent on enforcing compliance backed by the risk of punitive deprecations; thus, challenging them requires significant political power, legislative know-how, and financial resources that SME owners often lack [START_REF] Van Loo | The new gatekeepers: Private firms as public enforcers[END_REF]. While this limited political or legislative clout is applicable to most entrepreneurs, it is especially harmful to women, as they are even less represented in political arenas and legislative bodies and often lead enterprises that are smaller and more vulnerable than those run by men.

As noted, both women and men entrepreneurs and SME owners often lack the political wherewithal to influence the development of regulations, which is a main reason why we suspect that they might try to exert influence at the backend-e.g., by allaying the impact of regulations through less formal engagements with local enforcers of said regulations. We are referring to off-the-record, yet legal gestures enacted as coping modalities intended to influence and nudge local regulatory agents and tame the regulative burdens affecting small businesses. 3 Examples of informal engagement might include relational exchanges through the giving gifts to or reaching local officials to subtly induce reciprocity and expedite permit processing, phoneline connections, or to grant extra time to rectify items flagged up during inspections. We focus on informal acts because they are certainly accessible to entrepreneurs; their costs seem inconsequential, and they require little planning and time. We bound out formal legislature efforts as they require more coordinated engagements, are quite costly and time consuming, and entail special expertise that large enterprises might possess, but most SME owners lack [START_REF] Markman | Small entrants and large incumbents: A framework of micro entry[END_REF].

Using several rationales related to mistrust, power asymmetry, and vulnerability, we predict that women entrepreneurs are less likely than men to use informal channels to engage with regulatory enforcers. First, as explained, women mistrust institutions; this is at least in part because government officials often treat them less equitably than they do their men counterparts (Edelman Trust Barometer 2020). To illustrate, women business owners who seek to secure bank loans must divulge more private information than their male counterparts, [START_REF] Eddleston | Do you see what I see? Signaling effects of gender and firm characteristics on financing entrepreneurial ventures[END_REF]), but they are still treated with greater skepticism [START_REF] Carter | Gender, entrepreneurship, and bank lending: The criteria and processes used by bank loan officers in assessing applications[END_REF] and are granted smaller loan amounts while being charged higher interest rates [START_REF] Wu | Second-order gender effects: The case of U.S. small business borrowing cost[END_REF]. Given that interactions with officials compel women entrepreneurs to do more to often get less, it seems quite logical that women are reluctant to engage officials.

Second, over and above cultural differences, their mistrust in institutions and diffidence toward regulatory agents (who often are men), women entrepreneurs also tend to face greater power asymmetry at the personal level and competitive disadvantage at the business level [START_REF] Eddleston | Do you see what I see? Signaling effects of gender and firm characteristics on financing entrepreneurial ventures[END_REF]. Of course, a sense of vulnerability makes engagement with officials even less appealing. A related issue is that any unsanctioned contacts with officials might send 'mixed' or wrong signals, thus discouraging women entrepreneurs to deal informally with enforcers. As gendered institutions theory puts it, inspectors hold prejudicial views of women's aptitudes-e.g., they see women business owners as unsophisticated or lacking in critical knowledge, skills, experience, abilities, and resources.

In this scenario, women business owners will limit their engagements as their outreach might be decoded as too solicitous. It is also conceivable that reaching out to officials and inspectors, however informally, may trigger formal scrutiny; the knowledge of the vulnerability of their SMEs thus further discourages women from initiating such engagements (Özcan 2006).

For completeness, the association will be reversed for men in transition economies, which increasingly follow male dominant cultural norms. As mentioned, given their genderbased experience, men entrepreneurs are likely to trust regulators or the legal system. And because men-led SMEs are unable to influence regulatory policy (Van Loo, 2020), they are quite motivated to engage local enforcers at the backend. Given the safety with which men can bond and build camaraderie with governing agents, and the fact that they are less hindered by either cultural norms or gender inequality, we evince that men will try to aid their SMEs by responding to regulations through backchannels.

Summing up, informal responses to regulations rarely benefit women-owned SMEs; therefore, we predict a negative association between women's responses to regulatory enforcers and their SMEs' performance. On the other hand, we predict a positive association between men's responses to regulations and their SMEs' performance.

Hypothesis 3a: The responses of women to enforcers are associated with depressed firm performance, while those of men are associated with elevated firm performance.

We just theorized that women and men react to regulations differently; here, we hypothesize that their informal responses moderate-in opposite ways-the association between their experience of regulations and their SME performance. When women engage enforcers, they strengthen the association between how they experience regulations and their SME performance. In contrast, when men engage enforcers, they make the association between how they experience regulations and their SME performance less negative.

It is not easy to appreciate moderating associations, so here is a breviloquent recap.

Local enforcers' main job is to effect compliance and bear costs that parties would otherwise not have incurred [START_REF] Hawkins | The response of business to social regulation in England and wales: An enforcement perspective[END_REF]. Moreover, enforcers espouse rules thataccording to gendered institutions logic-are often not at all gender neutral. When women end up engaging with regulatory enforcers, they quickly learn that enforcers care far more about acquiescence and deterring noncompliance than they do about making concessive accommodations. It is unclear whether enforcers (many of whom are men) are gender-biased or not, but it is quite certain that engaging enforcers sub-optimizes their SMEs' performance, thus reinforces women's sense that regulations are consequential. Men, in contrast, hardly experience regulations as too consequential for their SME performance so their engagement with enforcers is essentially their backdoor to mitigate burdens they did not foresee.

Put another way, we predict that both women and men engage enforcers, but with different outcomes. When women turn to regulatory enforcers, it erodes the performance of their SMEs, whereas when men turn to enforcers, it often helps their SMEs. Thus:

Hypothesis 3b: When women respond to regulations, the performance of their SMEs suffers, whereas men's response to regulations helps their SMEs' performance.

For added clarity and as a prelude to the methods, results, and discussion, Figure 1 depicts the conceptual model, hypothesized relations, and level of empirical support.

- ------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 1 About Here -------------------------------------------------

METHODS

Data and Methodology

To test the hypotheses, we used data on 41,218 firms across 27 transition economies drawn from the 2005-2014 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS), 4 which includes a wide variety of countries in terms of businesses, economics, social, and institutional factors. 5 We focus on this period as it is characterized by a substantial number and sufficiently rich mixture of private businesses established since the 4 BEEPS is a joint project of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank. The dataset covers 2002, 2005, 2007-2009 and 2014, and not all variables are available in all time periods. 5 Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. We dropped Turkey from our sample as it had been a market economy long before the 1990s. collapse of the socialist system and it encompasses the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Used frequently in the economics literature, the BEEPS dataset was collected for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank to investigate the business environments of transition economies [START_REF] Bardasi | How do female entrepreneurs perform? Evidence from three developing regions[END_REF][START_REF] Gashi | Export behaviour of SMEs in transition countries[END_REF][START_REF] Mateut | Subsidies, financial constraints and firm innovative activities in emerging economies[END_REF]. The survey data are based on face-to-face interviews conducted with business officials and firm representatives. 6 The respondents shared key information about their firms, including ownership, competition, performance, and management, and the gender of their principal owners [START_REF] Muravyev | Entrepreneurs' gender and financial constraints: evidence from international data[END_REF]). To take gender effects into consideration, assist with the development of the experience of and responses to regulation variables, and to prevent common method bias, we collected additional data from the European Values Study. 7 For example, as culture varies across countries, the gender equality variable controls for cultural differences related to values of gender equality across the 27 countries.

The BEEPS dataset contains detailed information on firm characteristics, access to financial sources, the influence of regulations on businesses, and the characteristics of firm owners and senior managers, their genders and years of experience. We present the investigated items, definitions, and descriptive statistics in Table 1. Combing through the data, we learned that the sample primarily comprises of micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (fewer than 250 employees; see EU employment criteria).

Variable Definitions and Measurements

Several measures could reflect firm financial performance, which is our dependent variable, with sales, sales per worker, profits, or profits per worker often used in the 6 The survey samples were constructed through the stratified random sampling of national registries of firms or their equivalents. The firms were drawn from both the industry and services sectors; the distribution between these sectors was determined according to their relative contribution to the GDP of each country. Firms that operated in sectors subject to governmental price regulations and prudential supervision (banking, electric power, rail transport, and water and wastewater), enterprises with more than 10,000 employees, and firms established after 2002 were excluded from the sample. About three quarters of the firms sampled were SMEs. 7 This dataset provides information on family, work, environment, perceptions of life, politics, society, religion and morality, and national identity (Europeanvaluesstudy.eu, accessed May 5, 2020). literature. Following [START_REF] Sabarwal | How do female entrepreneurs perform? Evidence from three developing regions[END_REF], we used the natural logarithm of sales growth per worker to transform the Cobb-Douglas type production function into linear form for multivariate linear regression analysis. We also tested profits, but this variable suffered from too many missing observations. In addition to culture (Gender Equality) at country level, we also controlled for the characteristics of the sample firms, such as size, age, and industry fixed effects.

Courts and legislatures have long recognized that access to electricity, natural gas, water, and phonelines is a basic necessity. Given the 'duty to serve' and criticality of utility services to the general public, economic growth, and national security, most transitioneconomy countries nationalized their public utility sector either through state-owned enterprises or by ensuring that private utility firms act in full compliance through arm's length legislation. We frame public utility providers as quite reflective of their national regulators; for context, in Russia, the state controls 47% of the oil and gas sector and 37% of the utility sector. In Tajikistan, to obtain construction permits, firms must obtain clearance from multiple entities or they will not be connected to the utility grid, which takes about 47 days. (World Bank 2019). To test the hypotheses in a robust manner, we conducted several analyses and we present those in a sequential fashion. For the first test of H1, which predicted that regulations erode SME performance, we measured actual regulations by calculating the average number of days it took to connect SMEs to such utilities as phonelines, water, and electricity. 8 To test H2 (the experience of regulations), we measured the regulatory obstacles that SMEs faced in relation to a variety of items, including transportation, crime prevention, licensing issues, court proceedings, etc. Finally, to test H3 (response to regulation enforcers), we used a dummy that was set to 1 if the sample SMEs had engaged in informal gift giving to regulation enforcers. Table 1 presents the variable definitions and descriptive statistics.

- ----------------------------------------Insert Table 1 -----------------------------------------

Econometric Estimation Strategy

We employed different quantitative techniques to explore how women and men experience regulations and respond to enforcers, and the relations to SME performance. We also relied on difference-in-means tests to assess whether, on average, women and men business owners perceived and experienced different regulatory realities. For example, whereas it took an average of 41.71 days to connect women-owned SMEs to the electrical grid, that value went down to only 28.31 days for men-owned SMEs-a statistically significant difference. We saw a consistent pattern with other regulation-related variables; for example, women experienced significantly more phone-related interruptions and taxation issues than men. This pattern corroborates our general thesis that regulations-although presumed to be gender neutral-perpetuate systematic gender bias. To further isolate the effects of regulations on SME performance, we also relied on multiple linear regression analysis, which we describe next. Furthermore, to add assurance and rigor, and to account for heteroskedasticity, we conducted additional robustness tests.9

We ran an ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation on the pooled cross-sectional data (Table 2) using the industry and location (country) indicators to account for unobserved heterogeneity in the panel dataset. The regressions included the following control variables: firm size and age, as well as industry (at the two-digit level of NACE; the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community) and country fixed effects.

For further certitude, we also controlled for fixed assets, and we obtained consistent results.

Table 2 presents the results of the pooled OLS regression estimation, with the growth of sales per worker as the dependent variable. As noted, Table 2 merely features a preliminary testing of our hypotheses; this is mainly due to concerns that analyzing the full sample might not provide a stable assessment of the hypotheses because of contextual heterogeneity. For instance, the same regulations might affect high performers quite differently than laggards. As the multiple linear regression approach assumes a constant linear effect of co-variates on performance for all firms, we used this analysis as a prelude for a more detailed examination of the effects of regulations on SME performance (see below).

- ------------------------------------------Insert Table 2 About Here -------------------------------------------Table 2 shows that we first assessed the impact of culture on SME performance. As expected, a culture of gender equality was found to be significantly related to improved firm performance-across all models, the greater the gender equality, the higher the performance of SMEs. Interestingly, Model 1 revealed that, although a culture of gender equality benefits all SMEs, it is even more valuable for men-led SMEs than for women-led SMEs. Contrary to expectations, Model 2 offers no support for H1; there is little evidence of regulations affecting firm performance. Model 3 shows that experiencing regulations is positively related to SME performance, thus supporting H2a. Finally, Model 4 offers no support for H3a; neither informal responses to enforcers nor this variable's interaction with gender is statistically significant. The inconsistent results are not surprising, and align with our intuition that regulations would not have linear effects across the entire sample of womenand men-led SMEs; in fact, the preliminary results corroborate the need to conduct additional analyses to capture the variation of such effects within each gender and across performance types.

To increase reliability, we tested for non-linear effects by performing a quartile regression analysis. By dividing the sample into performance-based subsets [START_REF] Farinas | The dynamics of productivity: A decomposition approach using distribution functions[END_REF] and by testing the hypotheses for each gender, the quartile regression analysis afforded the sharpest and most detailed assessments of our conceptual model (Figure 1). This approach is especially useful for testing the interactions between the owner's gender, their experience of regulations, and their reactions to enforcers, and firm performance (Table 3).

In our case, we analyzed the effect of the predictors and interaction terms on firm performance by looking at the lowest performing (bottom 25%), average performing (middle 50%), and top performing SMEs (top 25%). The quartile regression approach enabled the investigation of the extent to which certain covariates may have affected the conditional distribution of firm performance within each subset. Thus, Table 2 features the preliminary analysis, while Table 3 features the full analytical model.

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- Insert Tables 3 -----------------------------------------

RESULTS

Using Figure 1 for reference, Table 3 features the more nuanced and complete results, based on the quartile analysis, and shows that H1 received marginal and mixed support. The regulations studied were marginally and positively related to the lowest performing menowned SMEs (bottom 25%), barely and negatively related to the top performing men-owned SMEs (top 25%), while unrelated to the remaining SMEs. Given the alignment between Tables 2 and3, we conclude that the association between regulations and SMEs performance is insignificant.

Turning to H2a-which posited that women's and men's experience of regulations would be associated with their SMEs' performance-the results show that there is indeed a gender-based effect; i.e., whereas women experience regulations as highly consequential and thus positively related to the performance of their SMEs, the association is reversed for men. This gender effect is stronger than the culture effect-it holds across all 27 countries and remains significant regardless of SME performance (the only exception being the highperforming men-led SMEs; Model 6). Although the actual regulations variable is unrelated to performance, the fact that women's and men's experience of regulations is inversely related to the performance of their SMEs lands support to our thesis that regulations are gendered. It is worth noting, however, that as a moderating predictor (H2b), the experience of regulations had no influence on the association between regulations and SME performance (the only exception being represented by the low-performing men-led SMEs; Model 4).

Stated more explicitly, we found no support for H2b.

Table 3 and Figure 1 also show that H3a and H3b received strong support. H3a predicted that women's and men's responses to regulatory enforcers would be correlated differently with SME performance, and it was supported. Specifically, while, for women, the response to enforcers is associated with a decline in SME performance, for men, it is correlated with an improvement. Specifically, for women, engaging enforcers is more detrimental for high-performing SMEs than it is for the low-performing ones; conversely, for men, it is especially edifying for low-and mid-performing SMEs, and has still positive but declining effects for high-performing ones.

H3b predicted that women's and men's informal responses to regulatory enforcers moderate (differently) the association between how they experience regulations and SME performance, and it too received strong support. Using the highest performing womenowned SMEs to explain the results (Table 3; Model 3), we see that when women do not engage enforcers, the performance coefficient is 19.479, but if they respond to enforcers, then the aggregate coefficient is lowered to 12.906 (19.479 -17.009 + 10.436). This means that when women engage enforcers, the performance of their SMEs remains positive, but at a declined rate (12.906 rather then 19.479). This finding is consistent with women experiencing regulations as highly consequential (H2a), and their disinclination to engage enforcers (H3a), as doing so sub-optimizes their SMEs' performance.

The results for men-owned SMEs are opposite; to clarify this finding, consider the lowest-performing men-led SMEs. As Table 3; Model 4 shows, when men do not engage enforcers, the performance coefficient remains -2.294, but when they respond to enforcers, then the aggregate coefficient is -0.511 (-2.294 + 3.384 -1.601). This means that when men engage enforcers, the performance of their SMEs is still declining, but at a lower rate (-0.511 rather than -2.294). Summing up, the results provide substantial support for hypotheses H2a, H3a, and H3b; marginal, inconsistent support for H1; and no support for H2b.

DISCUSSION

Regulations are prodigiously foundational to societal and economic order; as they contribute immensely to public health and education, human rights, race and gender equality, the environment and sustainability, commerce, and countless other aspects of civil life. At the same time, however, regulations can be draconian, thus placing undue burdens in the form of superfluous requirements, arrogate bureaucratic protocols, and pricing small companies out of the market. When regulations erect insuperable obstacles or bring about the implementation of onerous procedures, their costs exceed their benefits. Worse still, when regulations only hinder a specific subset of the population, they demoralize and precipitate resentment. The tremendous good that regulations afford and their unintended consequences, and our interest to unearth barriers to women's entrepreneurship, warrant the earnest efforts to study whether or how regulations are gendered.

Focusing on the conceptual side, our study sought to expand gendered institutions theory [START_REF] Acker | From sex roles to gendered institutions[END_REF][START_REF] Elam | Gendered institutions and cross-national patterns of business creation for men and women[END_REF]) by bringing clarity to the intersection between the culture-regulations-gender triad and SME performance. Analyses based on a longitudinal (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014), firm-level panel dataset from 27 countries in transition economies showed that women and men do experience and respond differently to regulations. Reflecting first on the direct effects, Table 3 shows that regulations have a marginal and inconsistent effect only on the low-and high-performing men-led SMEs. Given the absence of influence on the performance of women-led SMEs, we conclude that the association between regulations-at least as captured by the current study-and SME performance remains unclear. However, Table 3 reveals that how women and men experience and respond to regulations produce gender effects on the performance of SMEs. Specifically, how women (men) experience regulations is positively (negatively) related to the performance of women (men)-led SMEs.

In addition, while responding to enforcers is clearly beneficial for men-owned SMEs, it is highly detrimental for women-led SMEs.

Redirecting attention to the moderating effects, there is neither strong nor consistent evidence that how women and men experience regulations moderates the association between regulations and SME performance. Interestingly, and consistent with our theory, the interaction between how women and men experience regulations and engage enforcers has a mostly uniform effect on SME performance. Specifically, when women engage enforcers, the performance of their SME waned; here we refer to both direct and the moderating effects.

In contrast, the informal response of men to regulations mitigates the negative association between their experience of regulations and SME performance. We speculate that because men tend to underestimate regulations, they then end up engaging enforcers directly to enhance their SMEs' performance. This gender effect is so robust, it supersedes culture effect, but what is its root cause? Addressing underlying causes, testing the directionality of causal effects, and/or ruling out alternative explanations are certainly valid limitations that await future research. Such effort would necessitate additional data, perhaps even an experimental research design. Still, our earnest effort to address this spurious effect-by studying the beta coefficients (Table 3) and re-running the robustness checks-suggests that, in general, the response to regulations benefits men-led SMEs, but not women's. This insight aligns with our thesis and this study's raison d'être; i.e., that, when regulations are gendered, they perpetuate bias and inequality. This points at the fact that the influence of regulations goes well beyond undermining enterprising women; it also damages the performance of their SMEs. To be fair, given the methodological and data constraints we faced, we could not discern whether the regulatory effects studied constitute 'gender discrimination' per se; nevertheless, these effects do reflect significant gender inequality and thus economic imbalance.

Theoretical Contributions

This study makes several contributions. First, it challenges the dogma that regulations are gender neutral by showing that women and men do experience and informally respond to regulation differently, and that this gender effect is correlated with performance differences for women-and men-led SMEs and across 27 countries. Second, given that sustained economic growth and prosperity benefit from gender equality, this study shows that such equality requires great awareness that business regulations can be gendered. This effort to elevate awareness of gendered institutions is important because regulations are often modalities by which gender inequality imperceptibly permeates not only individuals and the labor force, but also the performance of SMEs. Third, by acknowledging that the quiddity of regulations is that they are cultural institutions, this study brings greater clarity to the cultureregulations-gender triad and firm performance. Finally, although entrepreneurship research continues to provide ever deeper insights into gender differences [START_REF] Dilli | How institutions and gender differences in education shape entrepreneurial activity: A cross-national perspective[END_REF], like other fields, it still views regulations as gender neutral. This study explicates how regulations propagate gender effects and influence firm-level performance, which is clearly a new, useful, and nonobvious addition to the entrepreneurship field.

Implications for Managerial Practice and Public Policy

We studied business regulations but suspect that even products and services are gendered and that this is not merely an academic hypothesis. To illustrate, automakers design seatbelts, headrests and airbags based on data collected from car crash tests that are conducted using mannequins that are anthropometrically and ergonomically based on men's physique and seating posture, thus, women, especially when pregnant, often fall outside those 'standard' product and service specifications. As a result, when involved in similar accidents, women are 17% more likely to die and 47% more likely to suffer serious injuries (D'Ignazio and Klein 2020; Perez 2020). The gendered nature of products and services is not always life threatening, but the fact that it disadvantages women's lives, businesses, and local economies is no longer disputed. The conventional wisdom is that an equal representation of women and men in regulatory functions will eradicate gender bias; however, if regulations are gender-biased, then women may be too (albeit to a lesser degree than men). Therefore, we worry that even in the presence of an 'equal representation' panacea, gender biases are likely to persist.

What could policymakers do? One way to de-bias and reduce the gender gap could be to use independent, nonprofit organizations to audit and rate regulations. Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) operate independently of any government; they could therefore study regulations objectively, focusing on the regulators' responsiveness to and equitability in the application of gender considerations, perhaps even by using certification processes-e.g., a

Morningstar rating system aimed at ranking regulations. Strong judicial systems are often correlated with vibrant economies, so we suspect that women wronged by biased regulations would use such third-party certifications or regulatory rating systems to amend biased regulations. We also challenge women's organizations to engage more consistently in the public discourse on built-in gender biases in regulations and call on governments and companies to ensure that regulations are designed ethically and deployed responsibly.

Future Research

The fact that certain regulations perpetuate gender bias should inspire revelatory research on gendered products and services as well as public policies, career choices, and even the creation of new ventures. Future studies could explore shifting epistemological positions-from how gender predicts certain outcomes to how social and economic orders are gendered-and thus how their influence on outcomes and processes might surpass the influence of cultural factors [START_REF] Ahl | Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions[END_REF]. For example, studies could unpack regulations by applying a finer-grained approach suited to analyze how more distinct and nuanced cultural contexts permeate specific legislations, labor market structures, socioeconomic classes, local norms, or family businesses, and how these factors impact women's entrepreneurship.

As noted, regulations vary greatly; therefore, follow up research should segment regulations based on their focal aims and scopes-e.g., environmental, HR (e.g., hiring, firing, training, safety, benefits), building and zoning regulations, etc. A typology of regulations is required because, outside of those areas in which there is gender parity, some inequalities privilege men at the expense of women, others privilege women at the expense of men. It would also be helpful to uncover whether certain classes or categories of regulations are more gender neutral than others, and why or under what conditions. Of course, it would be advisable to examine how regulations are also affected by national cultural settings.

Finally, our study relied on only three objective measures of regulations, and showed that despite their mundane nature, they produce significant gender bias. Still, the small number of regulations is a limitation, so future work should include a larger number and more diverse regulation types.

CONCLUSION

All efforts made to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship research and practice will remain inadequate until we become fully aware that regulations are not gender agnostic but, in fact, perpetuate gender bias. Based on data draw from 27 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia from 2005 to 2014, our study explains why and how regulations are gendered and how women's and men's experience and responses to regulations influence their firm performance. We show that women's and men's experience of regulations is correlated differently with the performance of their SMEs-the former experience regulations as being positively related to their SMEs' performance, whereas the latter experience them to be negatively correlated to their SME's performance. In contributing to gendered institutions theory, our study shows that (i) regulations perpetuate gender inequality; and (ii) such gender effects supersede cultural differences and extend well beyond the individuals involved spilling over into and impacting the wider organizations they lead.

Figure

  Figure 1: The Conceptual Model, Hypotheses, and Statistical Support

Table 1 : Variables, Definitions and Descriptive Statistics

 1 Average value of obstacles represented by electricity, telecommunication, transport, business inspections, compulsory certificates, crime, tax rates, licensing and courts (0 no obstacle to 4 very severe obstacle)

	Variables	Definition

Table 2 : OLS Regression Results; DV = Sales Growth per Worker (over two consecutive years; Ln)

 2

	Models	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	VARIABLES	Culture	H1	H2a	H3a
	Number of Employees	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
	Firm Age	0.005 **	0.009 *	0.005 **	0.006 *
		(0.002)	(0.005)	(0.002)	(0.004)
	Gender Equality	28.071 ***	27.526 ***	26.759 ***	32.097 ***
		(0.996)	(1.954)	(0.967)	(1.385)
	Gender (Women=1; Men=0)	2.182 ***	-0.297	0.115	-1.555
		(0.762)	(0.194)	(0.135)	(1.232)
	Gender * Gender Equality	-3.742 ***
		(1.288)
	Actual Regulations		0.000
			(0.001)
	Gender * Actual Regulations		-0.003
			(0.002)
	Experience of Regulations			0.165**
				(0.065)
	Gender * Experience of			-0.131
	Regulations			(0.102)
	Response to Reg. Enforcers				-0.013
					(0.278)
	Gender * Response Reg. Enforcers				0.844
					(0.628)
	Constant	-15.606 ***	-23.388 **	-16.048 ***	-17.470 **
		(4.827)	(10.971)	(4.830)	(7.377)
	R-squared	0.702	0.730	0.702	0.701
	Industry FE	YES	YES	YES	YES
	Country FE	YES	YES	YES	YES

* Statistical significance at 10% (weaker evidence) ** Statistical significance at 5% *** Statistical significance at 1% (stronger evidence) Standard Errors are in Parentheses

Table 3 : Quartile Regression Results DV: Sales Growth per Worker (over two consecutive years; Ln)

 3

	Models	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
		Women	Women	Women	Men	Men	Men
	Least to Best Performing:	Bottom	Middle	Top 75%	Bottom	Middle	Top 75%
		25%	50%		25%	50%
	Controls:
	Asset	0.289 ***	-0.028	-0.021	0.109 ***	0.079	0.122
		(0.026)	(0.050)	(0.027)	(0.014)	(0.127)	(0.090)
	Number of employees	-0.013 ***	-0.001	-0.006 *** -0.003 ***	-0.003 **	-0.003 ***
		(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.000)	(0.001)	(0.001)
	Firm age	0.050 ***	0.089 ***	0.072 ***	0.005 **	0.008	0.002
		(0.007)	(0.013)	(0.007)	(0.002)	(0.017)	(0.012)
	Predictors
	H1: Actual Regulations	0.004	0.011	-0.001	0.026 ***	0.013	-0.031 *
		(0.004)	(0.008)	(0.0043	(0.003)	(0.024)	(0.017)
	H2a: Experience of	12.965 ***	21.331 ***	19.479 ***	-2.294 ***	-2.925 **	-1.153
	Regulations	(3.052)	(5.874)	(3.135)	(0.143)	(1.320)	(0.934)
	H3a: Response to Regulatory	-9.941 ***	-16.282 ***	-17.009 ***	3.384 ***	3.981 ***	1.993 **
	Enforcers	(1.615)	(3.109)	(1.659)	(0.132)	(1.223)	(0.865)
	Moderators:
	H2b: Experience of	-0.003	-0.006	-0.001	-0.011 ***	-0.006	0.008
	Regulations * Actual	(0.002)	(0.004)	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.008)	(0.006)
	Regulations
	H3b: Experience of	6.876 ***	11.037 ***	10.436 ***	-1.601 ***	-1.899 **	-0.593
	Regulations * Response to	(1.525)	(2.934)	(1.566)	(0.073)	(0.678)	(0.480)
	Regulatory Enforcers
	Industry Fixed Effects	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
	Country Fixed Effects	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
	*, **, and *** refer to statistical significance levels of 10%, 5% and 1%, respectively.
	Standard Errors are in Parentheses

In the US, the misbehaviors of big enterprises (e.g., the Enron debacle in

2001) resulted in the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulation, which entails massive accounting fees that large firms can afford but can overwhelm SMEs.

We make no reference at all to unlawful acts; bribery, blackmailing and vigilantism are certainly important topics, but they fall beyond the scope of this study(cf. Cuervo-Cazurra 2008).

We also tested regulatory measures such as business inspections, certification, and tax filing; however, given their redundancy-and to declutter the tables-we decided to omit them.

The difference-in-means analyses, the inclusion of alternative measures of regulation (i.e., inspections, tax filing, etc.) and of course the robustness tests are all available upon request.