This paper exploits the rapid rise in self-employment rates in post-communist Eastern Europe as a valuable ?quasi-experiment? for understanding the sources of entrepreneurship. A relative demand-supply model and an individual sectoral choice model are used to analyze a 1993 survey of 27,000...

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 of and accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is that entrepreneurs enjoy higher returns to...

Parker and Van Praag (2009) showed, based on theory, that the group status of the profession 'entrepreneurship' shapes people's occupational preferences and thus their choice behavior. The current study focuses on the determinants and consequences of the group status of a profession,...

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

We construct a structural model of entry into self-employment to evaluate the impact of policies supporting entrepreneurship. Previous work has recognized that workers may opt for self-employment due to the nonpecuniary benefits of running a business and not necessarily because they are good at...

Elite college attendance significantly impacts students' entrepreneurship decisions and career dynamics. We find that an elite college degree is positively correlated with entrepreneurship (i.e., owning an incorporated business) but not with other self-employment forms. Our overlapping...