We exploit a natural experiment to investigate why financial constraints appear to limit firm formation. Exogenous variation in wealth results from unexpected inheritance due to sudden death and allows us to identify 304 constrained entrepreneurs, who start a business after receiving windfall...

Prior research has identified individual characteristics that distinguish business owners from non-business owners. We tested our contention that not every successful business owner can be characterized by such typical ldquo;entrepreneurialrdquo; characteristics. Multiple Analysis of Variance...

This paper examines the economic effects of entrepreneurial effort. It challenges the neoclassical doctrine of representative agent's utility maximization problem and suggests a return to the classical economic theory of the entrepreneur in the tradition of Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter. From...

Improved governance and lower start-up costs may not be sufficient for encouraging the type of entrepreneurship that matters for economic growth. Using panel data on 60 countries spanning the period 2003-07 this paper establishes that (i) opportunitymotivated entrepreneurship (as opposed to...

We investigate the effects that regional start-up activity has on employment in new and in incumbent businesses. The analysis is performed for West German regions over the 1987-2002 period. It shows that the effects of new businesses on employment in the incumbents are significantly positive and...

Empirical analyses suggest that the employment creating effect of start-ups is highest in regions with a low level of new business formation and that an increase in the regional start-up rate beyond a certain level may lead to negative employment effect. In explaining these results, we assume...

Public policy is currently shifting from SME policy towards entrepreneurship policy, which supports entrepreneurship without directing attention to quantitative goals and specific firms or employment groups. The institutional framework set by public policy affects the prevalence and performance...