 On the origins of entrepreneurship: Evidence from sibling correlationsTheodor Vladasel (), Matthew Lindquist, Joeri Sol and Mirjam Praag Journal of Business Venturing, 2021, vol. 36, issue 5 Abstract: Despite the consensus that entrepreneurship runs in the family, we lack evidence regarding the total importance of family and community background, as well as the relative importance of different background influences that affect entrepreneurship. We draw on human capital formation theories to argue that families and communities provide a salient context for the development of individual entrepreneurial skills and preferences, beyond the existing focus on parental entrepreneurship. We posit that early influences are more important than later influences and propose a hierarchy of family influences, whereby genes have the largest explanatory power, followed by parental entrepreneurship, neighborhoods, and parental resources, and finally by parental immigration, family structure, and sibling peers. Finally, we argue that the higher human and financial capital intensity of incorporated relative to unincorporated entrepreneurship predictably alters the hierarchy of family influences, as does gender. Sibling correlations estimated on Swedish register data confirm our hypotheses. Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Self-employment; Family background; Sibling correlations (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:36:y:2021:i:5:s0883902619301247 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2020.106017 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier |
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