This study examines the role of college graduates with degrees in the arts, STEM, and other creative fields as entrepreneurs and innovators in the US economy. As creativity is a trait of art students and is important for those acting as entrepreneurs and innovators in an economy, arts majors have the potential to play an important role in these areas. Using American Community Survey data, we look to identify arts, STEM, and other creative majors who are working in entrepreneurial occupations, those where self-employment is common, and innovative industries, those that are copyright intensive. As it is possible that the nature of arts occupations may be inherently more entrepreneurial and innovative, we compare arts majors to STEM and other creative majors also likely to work in such occupations. Using logistic regression, we find that majoring in a core arts field more than doubles an individual's likelihood of working in an entrepreneurial occupation or an innovative industry relative to non-creative majors. Other creative majors, like communications and STEM majors, are also associated with an increased likelihood of working as entrepreneurs or innovators. Relative to STEM and other creative majors, majoring in a core arts field is associated with the greatest increase in the likelihood of working in an entrepreneurial occupation and third greatest increase in the likelihood of working in an innovative industry. While arts graduates play an important role in artistic creation, this paper highlights a role for these graduates as entrepreneurs and innovators in the US economy.

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Recently there has been an emphasis on how time spent outside of the classroom can affect student outcomes, including high school graduation, with the hope of closing academic achievement gaps along socioeconomic and racial lines. This paper provides experimental evidence regarding a particular type of out-of-school activity—early work experience—on high school academic outcomes for low-income inner-city youth. Using randomized admissions lotteries for students who applied to the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), we estimate the effect of being selected to participate on academic outcomes as measured by administrative school records. We find that SYEP lottery winners are 4.4 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school on time and 2.5 percentage points less likely to drop out of high school during the four years after participating in the program relative to the control group. These improvements appear to be driven by better attendance and course performance in the year after being selected for the program, with the program's impact on attendance persisting into the second year. Survey data suggest that the Boston SYEP may affect academic outcomes by increasing aspirations to attend college, gaining basic work habits, and improving social skills during the summer.