This paper analyses the impact of a change in Australia’s immigration policy, introduced inthe mid-1990s, on migrants’ probability of becoming entrepreneurs. The policy changeconsists of stricter entry requirements and restrictions to welfare entitlements. The resultsindicate that those who...

There is no robust empirical support for the effect of financial incentives on the decision towork in self-employment rather than as a wage earner. In the literature, this is seen as apuzzle. We offer a focus on the opportunity cost, i.e. the wages given up as an employee.Information on income...

Using a large representative German data set and various concepts of self-employment, thispaper tests the “jack-of-all-trades” view of entrepreneurship by Lazear (AER 2004).Consistent with its theoretical assumptions we find that self-employed individuals performmore tasks and that their...

Drivers of entrepreneurial entry are investigated in this study by examining how entry intosmall-business ownership is shaped by industry-specific constraints. The human- andfinancial-capital endowments of potential entrepreneurs entering firms in various industriesare shown to differ...

Human capital plays an important role in the theory of economic growth, but it has been difficult to measure this abstract concept. We survey the psychological literature on cross-cultural IQ tests, and conclude that modern intelligence tests are well-suited for measuring an important form of a...

I show that in a conventional Ramsey model, between one-fourth and one- half of income differences across countries can be explained by a single factor: The steady-state effect of large, persistent differences in national average IQ on worker productivity. These differences in cognitive...

The years following the Second World War were those of the greatest economic growth that Europe had ever seen. If the countries of the Iberian Peninsula, neutral in the conflict and ruled by dictatorial regimes, enjoyed that growth and had participated in the convergence phenomenon, Ireland,...

The years following the Second World War were those of the greatest economic growth that Europe had ever seen. If the countries of the Iberian Peninsula, neutral in the conflict and ruled by dictatorial regimes, enjoyed that growth and had participated in the convergence phenomenon, Ireland,...

Shafer's evidence theory is a branch of the mathematics of uncertain reasoning that allows for novel possibilities to be conceived by a decision-maker. Many of its findings exhibit striking similarities with an alternative decision theory purported by Shackle in the 1950s, before expected...