Based on the notion that entrepreneurship is a 'local event', the literature argues that self-employed workers and entrepreneurs are 'rooted' in place. This paper tests the 'residential rootedness'-hypothesis of self-employment by examining for Germany and the UK whether the self-employed are...

This paper investigates whether the female self-employed are more affected by the COVID-19 crisis than the male self-employed using longitudinal data four months following the first 'lockdown' in the UK. We specifically test the role of family/social, economic and psychological factors on...

Hurst and Lusardi (2004) recently challenged the long-standing belief that liquidity constraints are important causal determinants of entry into self-employment. They demonstrate that the oft-cited positive relationship between entry rates and assets is actually unchanging as assets increase...

This paper discusses the claim made in Altonji and Pierret (1997) and Lange (2005) that a high speed of employer learning indicates a low value of job market signaling. The claim is first discussed intuitively in light of Spence’s original model and then evaluated in a simple extension of a...

We explore the country-specific institutional characteristics likely to influence an individual's decision to become an entrepreneur. We focus on the size of the government, on freedom from corruption, and on 'market freedom' defined as a cluster of variables related to protection of property...

Two ubiquitous empirical regularities in pay distributions are that the variance of wages increases with experience, and innovations in wage residuals have a large, unpredictable component. The leading explanations for these patterns are that over time, either firms learn about worker...

We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of the shadow economy on entrepreneurial entry, utilising 1998-2005 individual-level Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data merged with macro level variables. A simple correlation coefficient suggests a positive linear link between the size of...

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

Small business lending programs designed to move disadvantaged low-income people into business ownership have been difficult to implement successfully in the US context. Based in part on the premise that financing requirements are an entry barrier limiting the ability of aspiring entrepreneurs...

The focus on employer-provided health insurance in the United States may restrict business creation. We address the limited research on the topic of "entrepreneurship lock" by using recent panel data from matched Current Population Surveys. We use difference-indifference models to estimate the...