We exploit a mortgage reform that differentially unlocked home equity across the Danish population and study how this impacted selection into entrepreneurship. We find that increased entry was concentrated among entrepreneurs whose firms were founded in industries where they had no prior work...

During 1992-2007, house price growth is strongly correlated with local entrepreneurship. We show with Census Bureau data that most of this entry is related to construction and real estate; these entrants tend to be small and short-lived. Using a 1998 Texas reform that allowed home equity lending...