Demographics and Entrepreneurship

Edward Lazear, James Liang () and Hui Wang ()
Additional contact information
James Liang: Peking University
Hui Wang: Peking University

No 14-003, Discussion Papers from Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Entrepreneurship requires creativity and business acumen. Creativity may decline with age, but business skills increase with experience in high level positions. Having too many older workers in society slows entrepreneurship. Not only are older workers less innovative, but more significant is that when older workers occupy key positions they block younger workers from acquiring business skills. A formal theoretical structure is presented and tested using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data. The results imply that a one-standard deviation decrease in the median age of a country increases the rate of new business formation by 2.5 percentage points, which is about forty percent of the mean rate. Furthermore, older societies have lower rates of entrepreneurship at every age.

JEL-codes: J11 L26 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-ent
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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Working Paper: Demographics and Entrepreneurship (2014)
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