nep-ent New Economics Papers
on Entrepreneurship
Issue of 2023‒09‒04
six papers chosen by
Marcus Dejardin, Université de Namur


  1. Is Self-Employment for Migrants? Evidence from Italy By Brunetti, Marianna; Zaiceva, Anzelika
  2. Frank Knight and the Problem of the Twentieth Century By Richard N. Langlois
  3. Corporate taxes, productivity, and business dynamism By Colciago, Andrea; Lewis, Vivien; Matyska, Branka
  4. Complementing Business Training with Access to Finance: Evidence from SMEs in Kenya By Anik Ashraf; Elizabeth Lyons
  5. Firm Resilience and Growth during the Economics Crisis: lessons from the Greek depression By Christos Genakos; Ioannis Kaplanis; Maria Theano Tagaraki; Aggelos Tsakanikas
  6. Local banking markets and barriers to entrepreneurship in minority and other areas: Does broadband availability help? By Prieger, James

  1. By: Brunetti, Marianna; Zaiceva, Anzelika
    Abstract: Using a unique Italian dataset covering the period 2004-2020, we assess the immigrant-native gap in entrepreneurship and investigate channels behind it. The data allows us to account for many observable characteristics as well as for risk aversion, which is usually not observed, yet crucial for the self-employment decision. Unlike most of the existing empirical literature, we find that immigrants in Italy are less likely to be self-employed. The negative gap is confirmed when propensity score matching methodology is used. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the negative gap is larger for men, for economic migrants and those coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, while it is not significant for mixed immigrant-native couples, for highly skilled, and for migrants from Asia and Oceania. The largest gap is found for those working in the agricultural sector. Regarding additional channels, we explore the role of access to credit, including the informal one, and whether migrants are credit constrained, as well as the importance of migrant networks, easiness of doing business, and expenditures on services for migrants. Despite finding significant correlations between self-employment and some of these factors, none of them seem to decrease the magnitude of the negative gap.
    Keywords: immigrants, self-employment, gender, intermarriage, propensity score matching
    JEL: F22 J21 O15 J15
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1313&r=ent
  2. By: Richard N. Langlois (University of Connecticut)
    Abstract: Much has been written, especially in economics and management, about Frank Knight’s account of uncertainty and entrepreneurship. This paper attempts to put that theory in the larger context of the intellectual currents, and to a significant extent the economic history, in which Knight found himself. In response to rapid economic growth and the emergence of the large industrial enterprise in the U. S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many came to believe that the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century would need to be amended – if not jettisoned entirely. Frank Knight was among these. He was, along some dimensions, a Progressive and an Institutionalist. What set him apart from Progressives like John Dewey, however, was his theory of economic knowledge. Whereas Dewey and others insisted on the panacea of science as the solution to the “social question, ” Knight understood that in a world of uncertainty, the cognitive faculty of judgment was essential and unavoidable, thus providing a new intellectual underpinning for many of the institutions of nineteenth-century liberalism. Yet Knight did not follow the implications of his theory of knowledge all the way to their conclusions. This is because – perhaps among other reasons – he began with a well-developed model of perfect competition, which, unlike such contemporaries as Joseph Schumpeter and F. A. Hayek, he was never willing to relinquish as a normative ideal. Perhaps surprisingly, Frank Knight was a Progressive and an Institutionalist because he believed in the neoclassical model of the economy.
    Keywords: Frank Knight, uncertainty, entrepreneurship, liberalism, democracy, central planning
    JEL: B25 B3 B52 L2
    Date: 2023–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2023-06&r=ent
  3. By: Colciago, Andrea; Lewis, Vivien; Matyska, Branka
    Abstract: We identify the effects of corporate income tax shocks on key US macroeconomic aggregates. In response to a corporate income tax cut, we find that: (i) labor productivity increases; (ii) entry increases with delay; (iii) exit increases; (iv) total labor increases by more than production labor. To rationalize these empirical findings, we build a New Keynesian model with idiosyncratic firm productivity, and entry and exit. Our model features productivity gains due to selection and cleansing along the entry and exit margins. Models with homogeneous firms fail to account for the selection and cleansing process and produce counterfactual results.
    Keywords: corporate taxation, productivity, firm entry and exit
    JEL: E62 E32 H25
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:bubdps:162023&r=ent
  4. By: Anik Ashraf (LMU Munich); Elizabeth Lyons (University of California San Diego)
    Abstract: In this paper, we study the complementarity between business training and access to financial capital for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. All participants in a business training program are offered training. One-third of participants are offered loans immediately after training (Concurrent Loan group), one-third are offered loans six weeks after training (Delayed Loan group), and the remaining third are offered loans after another four weeks (Control group). While a long delay between training and loans may reduce knowledge retention and application by SMEs in the presence of complementarity, concurrent access to loans and associated business spending may crowd out the entrepreneurs' attention from improving business practices. We find evidence for the latter in both intention-to-treat and treatment-on-the-treated estimates. While SMEs in both Control and Delayed Loan groups improve their business practices, SMEs in the Concurrent Loan group who take loans do not improve their practices at all. Moreover, entrepreneurs who take loans spend less time on their businesses and their business revenue falls. Our evidence is consistent with the entrepreneurs in our study using loans to substitute for their income.
    Keywords: business training; access to finance;
    JEL: O12 L26 M53
    Date: 2023–08–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:416&r=ent
  5. By: Christos Genakos; Ioannis Kaplanis; Maria Theano Tagaraki; Aggelos Tsakanikas
    Abstract: The global financial crisis that burst in 2008 adversely affected business performance in many countries, especially in Europe. However, the impact of the crisis on entrepreneurship and business dynamics differed amongst countries, depending on their businesses resilience, the policies implemented, but also their predominant productive structure. The magnitude and length of the Greek depression have no precedent among modern middle and high-income economies. Still, to date, there is no systematic analysis of the impact of the crisis on entrepreneurship and business dynamism. This study attempts to fill this gap by examining individual firm, sectoral and regional level characteristics that might affect existing firm resilience and new firm survival rate. We use two sources of data with the most extensive coverage of small (sole proprietorship) and large (other legal status firms) firms containing information on entry and exit in Greece. Matching data from patents and trademarks allow us to examine the interplay between entrepreneurship and innovation. Our analysis focuses on the factors that help or hinder firm survival and growth. We find that the crisis increased the exit likelihood for a firm by 5% to 16%. Larger firms, with significant fixed assets, lower financial leverage, operating in concentrated industries, but also those that are innovation and export oriented tend to have better chances of survival compared to their counterparts. These results are important for designing business policies not only in Greece but also other countries facing similar crises.
    Keywords: Greece, entrepreneurship, business resilience, business dynamism, innovation, growth
    Date: 2023–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hel:greese:186&r=ent
  6. By: Prieger, James
    Abstract: This empirical study investigates the linkages among entrepreneurship in the form of establishment entry, local banking markets, and broadband availability, focusing on minority areas in the US. Lack of access to banks and lack of competition in the market for small business loans can make it more difficult for an entrepreneur to overcome the liquidity constraint to starting a new business. Broadband internet access can facilitate startups directly by enhancing firm profitability and indirectly by stimulating competition in the loan market, lowering the cost of access to finance, and enabling access to financial capital from fintech lenders. The barriers to new business creation erected by local banking markets are hypothesized to be even higher in minority areas, given the greater difficulty minority entrepreneurs face in raising financial capital. The empirical results show that broadband availability, local bank density, and competition in small business loans all facilitate startups. Broadband lowers barriers for entrepreneurs as hypothesized through both the direct and indirect channels. Broadband availability attenuates the barriers from insufficient access to local banks and lack of competition in small business loans from banks. For some industries, higher bank density and greater loan competition facilitate startups more in minority areas than in mostly white areas. Given that minority areas have many fewer banks per capita and much less loan competition than mostly white counties, the results imply that minority areas face even higher barriers to entrepreneurship from insufficient local formal financial resources. The moderating effect of broadband on local financial constraints applies even more so to Black communities; thus while the barriers for Black entrepreneurs may be higher, access to broadband has a greater alleviating effect on those barriers. Business creation in Hispanic areas also faces obstacles from the local banking environment, but broadband does not appear to help reduce them, although it still has a positive direct effect on entry. Additional evidence shows that broadband helped small businesses in minority areas procure more bank loans. Broadband access can thus help entrepreneurs in general, Blacks in particular, and to a lesser extent Hispanics surmount the liquidity constraint to starting a business. The implications of the results are discussed with reference to current and proposed policy to promote broadband availability, usage, and digital equity.
    Keywords: entrepreneurship; startups; minority entrepreneurship; broadband internet access; fintech; FCC Form 477 data; entrepreneurs
    JEL: D22 L26 R11
    Date: 2023–01–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:118102&r=ent

This nep-ent issue is ©2023 by Marcus Dejardin. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.