We study the effects of liquidity constraints and start-up costs on the relationship between wealth and the fraction of entrepreneurs in an economy. We develop a dynamic occupational choice model with endogenous wealth and entry into entrepreneurship. The model predicts that, with liquidity...

Earlier studies on entrepreneurship and self-employment among immigrants call attention to the fact that also the market for self-employment or entrepreneurs consists of a supply and demand side as well as the interaction between these two. More recent research suggests that a mix of personal...

Ethnic minorities have lower wages compared to the ethnic majority in most EU-countries. However, to what extent these wage gaps are the result of prejudice toward ethnic minority workers is virtually unknown. This study sets out to examine what role prejudice play in the creation of the ethnic...

Parental entrepreneurship is a strong, probably the strongest, determinant of own entrepreneurship. We explore the origins of this intergenerational association in entrepreneurship. In particular, we identify the separate effects of pre- and post-birth factors (nature and nurture), by using a...

Innovation is key to technology adoption and creation, and to explaining the vast differences in productivity across and within countries. Despite the central role of the entrepreneur in the innovation process, data limitations have restricted standard analysis of the determinants of innovation...

In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-employment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an...

Using a large recent representative sample of the German population this paper contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing the hypothesis that young and small firms are hothouses for nascent entrepreneurs. The empirical estimation takes the rare events nature of...

In western industrialized countries men are on average more than twice as active in entrepreneurship as women. Based on data from a recent representative survey of the adult population in Germany this paper uses an empirical model for the decision to become selfemployed to test for differences...

Using Finnish panel data, we study how entrepreneurs differ from workers in education and income dynamics. We find that workers have higher median income in all educational groups. Without additional controls, entrepreneurs have higher average income with all but undergraduate level of...

Four decades ago, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan made the argument that the black family "was not strong enough to create those extended clans that elsewhere were most helpful for businessmen and professionals." Using data from the confidential and restricted access Characteristics of...