Indian immigrants in the United States and other wealthy countries are successful in entrepreneurship. Using census data from the three largest developed countries in the world receiving Indian immigrants - the United States, United Kingdom and Canada - the authors examine the performance of...

Policy makers and researchers are actively debating over the consequences of student debt for individuals’ choices and aggregate quantities in the US. Using micro-level data and focusing on entrepreneurial outcomes, I document that having a student loan is associated with a lower likelihood of...

Two issues have taken center stage in the recent debates about U.S. immigration policy: one, illegal immigration and more generally the entrance of poorly educated individuals into the U.S. economy and two, whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admissions system or move towards a...

Employing a large dataset of venture capital investments in US Internet firms, we analyze the effect of the current financial crisis on the venture capital market. Using regression analysis, we find that the financial crisis is associated with a 20% decrease in the average amount of funds raised...

Immigrant entrepreneurs are critical to regional and national economies. Immigrants in the USA have higher self-employment rates than natives, and immigrants have made outsized contributions as founders of numerous highly successful firms. However, we document that immigrant self-employment...

We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly...

U.S. military contracting has been plagued by systematic corruption, fraud, and waste during both times of peace and war. These outcomes result from the inherent features of the U.S. military sector which incentivize unproductive entrepreneurship. The military sector is characterized by an...

Using state-level data on productive and unproductive entrepreneurship, shadow economy size, and public official corruption, this paper examines whether formal sector productive (unproductive) entrepreneurial activity is associated with lower (higher) levels of informal economic activity....

This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings and provides empirical evidence for a model that predicts a positive impact of immigration on entrepreneurial activity. Immigrants, we hypothesize, facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. At...

This paper offers a new theory of the corruption-shadow economy relationship: one that defines it as either collusive – i.e., crony – or non-collusive. Using new estimates of state-level shadow economy size, and data on corruption convictions of U.S. public officials for the 48 contiguous...