Entrepreneurial Spawning from Remote Work

Alan Kwan, Ben Matthies, Richard R. Townsend and Ting Xu

No 33774, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using a novel firm-level remote work measure created from big data on Internet activity, we show that firms with higher remote work during the pandemic are more likely to see their employees becoming entrepreneurs. This effect holds both unconditionally and relative to other types of job turnovers. We establish causality using instrumental variables and a panel event study. The marginally created businesses are higher quality than the average new firm. The effect is not driven by employee selection, preference change, or forced turnover. Rather, remote work increases spawning by providing the time and downside protection needed for entrepreneurial experimentation.

JEL-codes: E32 J22 J24 L26 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-sbm
Note: CF LS PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33774.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:33774

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33774
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().