This study examines how foreign aid and institutions affect entrepreneurship activity following natural disasters. We use insights from the entrepreneurship, development, and institutions literature to develop a model of entrepreneurship activity in the aftermath of natural disasters. First, we hypothesize the effect of natural disasters on entrepreneurship activity depends on the amount of foreign aid received. Second, we hypothesize that natural disasters and foreign aid either encourages or discourages entrepreneurship activity depending on two important institutional conditions: the quality of government and economic freedom. The findings from our panel of 85 countries from 2006 to 2016 indicate that natural disasters are negatively associated with entrepreneurship activity, but both foreign aid and economic freedom attenuate this effect. In addition, we observe that foreign aid is positively associated with entrepreneurship activity but only in countries with high quality government. Hence, we conclude that the effect of natural disasters on entrepreneurship depends crucially on the quality of government, economic freedom, and foreign aid. Our findings provide new insights into how natural disasters and foreign aid affect entrepreneurship and highlight the important role of the institutional context.

这项研究研究了自然灾害后外国援助和机构如何影响企业家活动。我们利用来自企业家精神，发展和机构文献的见解来开发自然灾害后的企业家精神活动模型。首先，我们假设自然灾害对企业家活动的影响取决于所接受的外国援助的数量。其次，我们假设自然灾害和外国援助会鼓励或阻止企业家活动，这取决于两个重要的制度条件：政府质量和经济自由。我们的85个国家/地区小组从2006年至2016年的调查结果表明，自然灾害与企业家活动负相关，但是外国援助和经济自由都减弱了这种影响。此外，我们观察到，外国援助与企业家活动有正相关关系，但仅在具有高质量政府的国家中有效。因此，我们得出结论，自然灾害对企业家精神的影响在很大程度上取决于政府的素质，经济自由和外国援助。我们的发现为自然灾害和外国援助如何影响企业家精神提供了新见解，并突出了制度背景的重要作用。