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Title: Essays in Entrepreneurship
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Asoni, Andrea
Essays in Entrepreneurship
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2011
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): College Education; Entrepreneurship; Intelligence; Self-Employed Workers; Self-Esteem; Taxes

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This thesis has two chapters. In the first chapter, I study the effect of college education, intelligence, and self-confidence on entrepreneurship using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979. Controlling for intelligence and self-confidence I find that college education has no effect on business survival, but increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. Intelligence boosts business survival, even accounting for selection. Moreover smarter individuals are more likely to start incorporated firms but less likely to found unincorporated ones. Self-confidence increases the likelihood of starting a firm and has a positive effect on business survival. These results suggest that existing conflicting evidence on this topic is driven by the failure to effectively control for unobserved characteristics.

In the second chapter, which is a joint work with Tino Sanandaji, we study the effect of taxation on entrepreneurship, taking into account both the amount of entry and the quality of new ventures. We show that even with risk neutral agents and no tax evasion progressive taxes can increase entrepreneurial entry, while reducing average firm quality. So called "success taxes" increase startup of lower value business ideas by reducing the option value of pursuing better projects. This suggests that the most common measure used in the literature, the likelihood of entry into self-employment, may underestimate the adverse effect of taxation.

Bibliography Citation
Asoni, Andrea. Essays in Entrepreneurship. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2011.