Dinner Table Human Capital and Entrepreneurship

Hans Hvide and Paul Oyer ()

No 24198, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We document three new facts about entrepreneurship. First, a majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers’ industry of employment. Second, this tendency is correlated with intelligence: higher-IQ entrepreneurs are less likely to follow their fathers. Third, an entrepreneur that starts a firm in the same industry as where his father was employed tends to outperform entrepreneurs in the same industry whose fathers did not work in that industry. We consider various explanations for these facts and propose that “dinner table human capital”, where children obtain industry knowledge through their parents, is an important factor behind them.

JEL-codes: G3 J24 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ent, nep-knm, nep-lma and nep-sbm
Note: CF LE LS PR
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Dinner Table Human Capital and Entrepreneurship (2018)
Working Paper: Dinner Table Human Capital and Entrepreneurship (2018)
Working Paper: Dinner Table Human Capital and Entrepreneurship (2017)
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