Data on occupational choice among return migrants in Tunisia reveal that higher inequality of wealth reduces the level of new business activity. The effect is not large, however. Even dramatic redistributions of wealth would not provide much stimulus to entrepreneurship

Development practitioners are coming to a consensus that participation by the intended beneficiaries improves project performance. But is there convincing evidence that this is true? Skeptics have three objections: 1) quot;Participation is not objective -- project rankings are subjective; 2) this...

The extent of entrepreneurial activity in an economy with poorly developed capital markets depends on the distribution of wealth, though in potentially complex ways. A non-parametric model of the wealth effect on self-employment is estimated using micro data on the occupational choices of return...

It is widely assumed that pervasive credit market failures mean that a person's current wealth is critical to whether or not that person can take up opportunities to start a new business. The authors show that inequality in wealth can be either good or bad for the level of entrepreneurship in an...

The paper tests for nonlinearities in the wealth effect on self-employment, as can arise from startup costs or liquidity constraints. Using both nonparametric and parametric methods, we show that the relationship between the probability of a return migrant to Tunisia starting up a business and...

This paper studies migration decisions of very poor households in an environment with a high level of violence. By matching detailed retrospective data on violence levels in Colombian rural municipalities with a household survey collected for the evaluation of the "Familias en Acción" welfare...