We do not know about: how effective are Belarusian enterprises, what is the share of state enterprises in the economy, what is the difference between private and state enterprises, what is the distribution of labor, capital and materials among firms. This work is an attempt to answer these questions using the data on JSCs.

The development of a private sector and the expansion of its role in the economy is one of the key goals repeatedly announced by the Belarusian authorities. The reforms carried out in Belarus in 2006-2014 moved the country from 106th to 57th position in the World Bank Doing Business ranking. The official statement is that reforms boosted the rapid development of business initiatives and its impact on economic development.

Little knowledge exists on difference in innovation behavior of men and women leading the SMEs in transition countries. This paper estimates whether there is a gender gap in SMEs innovation actions. Results show that propensity to innovate is higher among female owners and this finding preserves for 5 measures of innovativeness. Thus, female involvement in business might be beneficial for the innovative sustainable development of economy. Estimation of the gap in performance of implemented innovations did not reveal any strong prevailing gender in terms of efficiency.

This work studies the impact of all the three groups of factors on the development of business activities in Belarus.

The research was focused on business associations (hereinafter referred to as BA) in Belarus.

The paper investigates that question using 2006-2010 Belarusian Household Survey on Incomes and Expenditures and is based on the multinomial logit choice model.