Does Career Risk Deter Potential Entrepreneurs?

Gottlieb, Joshua D.; Townsend, Richard R.; Xu, Ting

doi:10.3386/w22446

Cited by 19 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…With two notable exceptions, entrepreneurship scholars have expressed little interest in labor market institutions. One exception is a small and important literature on institutional features, such as social welfare benefits, health insurance, and retirement provisions (Hombert, Schoar, Sraer, and Thesmar 2017; Gottlieb, Townsend, and Xu 2018). But note that this research is framed as trying to understand individual wealth and liquidity constraints (Evans and Jovanovic 1989; Holtz-Eakin, Joulfaian, and Rosen 1994), as opposed to broader institutional variation across time and space in how benefits are contingent upon employment status and how that might shape entrepreneurial action from a cultural perspective as well as an economic perspective.…”

Section: Institutions and Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to a Special Issue on Entrepreneurship and Employment: Connecting Labor Market Institutions, Corporate Demography, and Human Resource Management Practices

Burton¹,

Fairlie²,

Siegel

2019

ILR Review

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With the growing attention to entrepreneurship as an engine of job creation and economic development, it is important for social scientists who are broadly interested in labor market and employment topics to focus attention on new firms and the policies and practices that surround them. The authors argue that the next generation of scholarship should pay particular attention to labor market institutions, the ecosystem of existing employers, and the human resource management practices that provide the strategic context for entrepreneurs and shape the career opportunities for workers. Remarkable variation occurs across space and time in the prevalence and performance of entrepreneurs. There are also many open questions as to the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurship, for entrepreneurs, their communities, and their employees. The availability of new administrative data across many countries will allow for comparative cross-national studies and will provide opportunities to bring qualitative and mixed-method approaches to entrepreneurial labor market studies. This introduction and the articles in this special issue offer a path forward.

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Section: Institutions and Entrepreneurshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to a Special Issue on Entrepreneurship and Employment: Connecting Labor Market Institutions, Corporate Demography, and Human Resource Management Practices

Burton¹,

Fairlie²,

Siegel

2019

ILR Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…We also complement a large literature on the role of financing constraints on entrepreneurship. 6 Closest to our paper is Gottlieb, Townsend, and Xu (2016), who study the effect of an extension of protected employment leave to one year for female employees who give birth. Like us, they find that downside protection promotes transition into self-employment and that these newly created firms are not less likely to create jobs.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Can Unemployment Insurance Spur Entrepreneurial Activity? Evidence from France

Hombert¹,

Schoar²,

Sraer³

et al. 2020

The Journal of Finance

101

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We evaluate the effect of downside insurance on self-employment. We exploit a largescale reform of French unemployment benefits that insured unemployed workers starting businesses. The reform significantly increased firm creation without decreasing the quality of new entrants. Firms started postreform were initially smaller, but their employment growth, productivity, and survival rates are similar to those prereform. New entrepreneurs' characteristics and expectations are also similar. Finally, jobs created by new entrants crowd out employment in incumbent firms almost onefor-one, but have a higher productivity than incumbents. These results highlight the benefits of encouraging experimentation by lowering barriers to entry.The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.Attributed to George W. Bush.OVER THE LAST TWO DECADES, policymakers and academics alike have embraced the idea that reducing barriers to self-employment and entrepreneurship is important for promoting job creation. 1 The primary focus of empirical research has been on understanding how such barriers affect the level of entrepreneurial activity (i.e., the number of new firms created). Many recent studies find evidence of significant heterogeneity among potential entrepreneurs'

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“…For differences-in-discontinuities, one approach is to show the fitted models for both the treated and placebo regions, which we follow. Another approach is to graph the difference between the outcome for the Oregon-Washington border and the Washington interior regions across the running variable, which Gottlieb et al (2016) use. Both yield similar visual evidence near the cutoff in our setting because there is essentially no response in the interior of Washington.…”

Section: Differences-in-discontinuitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%