Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform relative to natives in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who first entered on a student/trainee visa or a...

We investigate whether acquiring more education when young has long-term effects on risk-taking behavior in financial markets and whether the effects spill over to spouses and children. There is substantial evidence that more educated people are more likely to invest in the stock market....

We develop entrepreneurship and institutional theory to explain variation in different types ofentrepreneurship across individuals and institutional contexts. Our framework generateshypotheses about the negative impact of higher levels of corruption, weaker property rightsand especially...

In contrast to the very large literature on skill-biased technical change among workers, thereis hardly any work on the importance of skills for the entrepreneurs who employ thoseworkers, and in particular on their evolution over time. This paper proposes a simple theory ofskill-biased change in...

We analyze empirically the effects of urban agglomeration on Italian college graduates’ workpossibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that each 100,000inhabitant-increase in the size of the individual’s province of work reduces the chances ofbeing an entrepreneur...

How valuable is education for entrepreneurs’ performance as compared to employees’?What might explain any differences? And does education affect peoples’ occupationalchoices accordingly? We answer these questions based on a large panel of US labor forceparticipants. We show that education...

We combine two empirical observations in a general equilibrium occupational choice model.The first is that entrepreneurs have more control than employees over the employment ofand accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is thatentrepreneurs enjoy higher returns to...

This paper estimates an unobserved components model to explore the macro dynamics ofentrepreneurship in Spain and the US. We ask whether entrepreneurship exhibits hysteresis,defined as a macro dynamic structure in which cyclical fluctuations have persistent effects onthe natural rate of...

We model educational investment and labour supply in a competitive economy with home and market production. Heterogeneous workers are assumed to have different productivities both at home and in the workplace. Following Rosen (1983), we show that there are private increasing returns to education...

This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and labour productivity in small and medium enterprises in Italy. By means of structural equations models, the analysis investigates the effect of different aspects of the multifaceted concept of social...