This paper examines the roles of specialized versus general skills in explaining variation in the returns to an agriculture degree across majors inside and outside the agricultural industry. The focus on returns by sector of employment is motivated by the finding that most agricultural majors...

 Entrepreneurship is a hot topic both in academic and policy circles.There is a growing recognition that entrepreneurship is a driving force in economic growth development in both established and emerging economies. There is also an increasing body of evidence suggesting entrepreneurship that...

The link between measured risk aversion and the decision to become an entrepreneur is well established, but the link between risk preferences and entrepreneurial success is not. Standard theoretical models of occupational choice under uncertainty imply a positive correlation between an...

We study the importance of sunk costs in determining entry conditions and inferences about firm conduct in an adapted Bresnahan and Reiss (1991, 1994) framework. In our framework, entrants incur sunk costs to enter, while incumbents disregard these costs in deciding on continuation or exit. We...

The proportion of U.S. high school students working during the school year ranges from 23% in the freshman year to 75% in the senior year. This study estimates how cumulative work histories during the high school years affect probability of dropout, high school academic performance, and the...

This study analyzes whether economic conditions at the time of labor market entry affect entrepreneurship, using difference in business start-ups between cohorts of college students graduating in boom or bust economic conditions. Those graduating during an economic bust tend to delay their...

For the first 13 years after entry, the hazard rate for firm exits is persistently higher for urban than rural firms. While differences in observed industry market, local market and firm attributes explain some of the rural-urban gap in firm survival, rural firms retain a survival advantage 25%...

We introduce a taxonomy that classifies industries using three criteria: net growth in the number of firms; the interrelationship between firm entry and firm exit; and the degree of urban-bias in industry growth. We show that in 9 of 15 two-digit NAICS industries investigated, there is evidence...