Roads Leading to Self-Employment: Comparing Transgenerational Entrepreneurs and Self-Made Start-Ups

Gerard Pfann and Boris Blumberg

No 10699, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper studies the event history of business foundation and distinguishes between transgenerational entrepreneurship and self-made start-ups. Three theoretical concepts of human, financial and social capital are linked to investigate variations over time in the decision process to become self-employed. Data from a cohort of Dutch inhabitants born in 1939/1940 who have been interviewed three times during their lives in 1952, 1983, and 1993 allows testing theoretical hypotheses that state clear differences between these two paths towards business ownership. Empirical results show that the base-line hazard of individuals without self-employed parents increases with time, while people with entrepreneurial parents become self-employed at an early age. Moreover, social capital is a better predictor of enterprise than human capital.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; Self-employment; Transgenerational mobility; Occupational choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J62 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-lab and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10699 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Roads Leading to Self-Employment: Comparing Transgenerational Entrepreneurs and Self-Made Start-Ups (2015)
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:cpr:ceprdp:10699

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10699

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().