Do attitudes toward risk taking affect entrepreneurship? Evidence from second-generation Americans

Areendam Chanda and Bulent Unel ()
Additional contact information
Bulent Unel: Louisiana State University

Journal of Economic Growth, 2021, vol. 26, issue 4, No 2, 385-413

Abstract: Abstract This paper empirically investigates the impact of willingness to take risks on entrepreneurship. We use a quarter century of data on second-generation Americans from Current Population Surveys in conjunction with a measure of willingness to take risks based on the Global Preference Survey. The level of risk taking in the country of origin is found to have a positive and significant impact on the likelihood of being an entrepreneur. A one-standard deviation increase in risk taking increases the probability of being an entrepreneur by 18%. We find that risk taking is also robust to other preference and cultural factors such as trust, patience, and individualism, as well as several deep-root determinants of development.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Risk attitudes; Immigrants; Second-generation Americans; Preference measures; Occupational choice; Comparative development; Cultural transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 J24 J61 L26 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10887-021-09197-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Attitudes Toward Risk Taking Affect Entrepreneurship? Evidence from Second-generation Americans (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jecgro:v:26:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s10887-021-09197-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10887-021-09197-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().