Réka Zempléni

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2019 - 2020 Academic Year

How to Best Leverage Personality Tests for Supporting Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries?

Entrepreneurs are important drivers of development. Nevertheless, existing entrepreneur training programs had small and heterogeneous impacts. This project explores whether a mostly psychological intervention can make early-stage entrepreneurs believe in their abilities to improve in any skill and be able to actually do so thereby bridging the gap between the needs of developing country entrepreneurs and the often Silicon-Valley-influenced expectations of accelerators. This project partners with a Myanmar-based-accelerator to have the potential to strengthen Myanmar’s young entrepreneurial ecosystem through increasing the number of promising entrepreneurs at all stages creating a virtuous cycle of increased entrepreneurial activity, job creation and growth.

Réka Zempléni, Department of Economics

Réka Zempléni is a PhD student in economics. Her research is about understanding the role of opportunity entrepreneurship in contributing to growth in developing countries, and understanding the various factors that influence the potential of entrepreneurship such as behavioral factors, philanthropic and investing activities, education and institutions. Her previous work looked at the role of media bias on political outcomes and on civic engagement. Prior to Stanford, Zempléni received her undergraduate degree (highest honors) in economics, with minors in the Teacher Preparatory Program, and in environmental studies from Princeton University, as well as co-founded an educational non-profit in Hungary.

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