variables
the survey allowed for identifying persons who recently made investments in businesses of others. to be considered as an informal investor, the individual had to respond positively to the question: "in the past three years, have you personally provided funds for new business started by someone else, excluding any purchase of stocks or mutual funds?"
a series of variables were considered to measure some characteristtics of the investors: education level (categorical variables based on the education level of the respondent, which could be: no education, some secondary education, secondary degree, post-sec-ondary education and post-secondary degree); and the employment situation (categorical variable according to current employment: full time, part time, retired or disabled, homemaker,student and other). the amount invested by informal investors was obtained from the following question: "how much,in total,have you provided in the last three years?" investments over usd 20.00 were excluded following the recommendation of bygrave et al. (2003) in order to eliminate outiers.
the following dichotomous variables (yes/no) were used to evaluate perceptions related to entrepreneurship: