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In the second chapter, motivated by the finding that partnered men and women are more likely to become business owners than are their single counterparts, I ask whether the observed marriage and cohabitation effects are a result of partner income. Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I first show that when partner income is included as a control, the marriage and cohabitation effects decrease substantially for women, while the effects persist for men. Second, I show that the marriage and cohabitation effects vary with partner income for women but not men. For example, a woman whose husband's income is in the fifth quintile is 1.9 times more likely to transition to business ownership than a woman whose husband’s income is in the second quintile for men. On the other hand, a married man with a high-income wife is no more or less likely to transition to business ownership than a married man with a low-income wife.

In the third chapter, re-examine Lazear's (2005) jack-of-all-trades theory. Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I ask, what are the wage gains associated with a self-employed worker's prior occupational experience? Overall, I find results consistent with Lazear's theory, which suggests that the returns to occupational specialization are substantially larger for wage workers than the self-employed. I predict that self-employed workers with ten years of prior occupational experience earn a wage that is only 3.2% greater than do self-employed workers with two years of prior occupational experience. However, for wage workers I predict that the wage gains associated with a ten year increase in prior occupational experience (zero to ten years) is 2.1 times larger than the wage gains associated with a two year increase (zero to two years) in prior occupational experience.