Punctuated Entrepreneurship (Among Women)

Matt Marx

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: The gender gap in entrepreneurship may be explained in part by employee non-compete agreements. Exploiting exogenous state-level variation in non-compete policy, I find that women more strictly subject to non-competes are 11-17% more likely to start companies after their employers dissolve. This result is not explained by the incidence of non-competes or lawsuits; however, women face higher relative costs in defending against potential litigation and in returning to paid employment after abandoning their ventures. Thus entrepreneurship among women may be “punctuated” in that would-be female founders are throttled by non-competes, their potential unleashed only by the failure of their employers.

Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2018/CES-WP-18-26.pdf First version, 2018 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:18-26

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