Wealth, Tastes, and Entrepreneurial Choice / Erik G. Hurst, Benjamin W. Pugsley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hurst, Erik G.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pugsley, Benjamin W.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21644.

NBER working paper series no. w21644

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

The non-pecuniary benefits of managing a small business are a first order consideration for many nascent entrepreneurs, yet the preference for business ownership is mostly ignored in models of entrepreneurship and occupational choice. In this paper, we study a population with varying entrepreneurial tastes and wealth in a simple general equilibrium model of occupational choice. This choice yields several important results: (1) entrepreneurship can be thought of as a normal good, generating wealth effects independent of financing constraints, (2) non-pecuniary entrepreneurs select into small scale firms, (3) subsidies designed to stimulate more business entry can have regressive distributional effects. Despite abstracting from other important considerations such as risk, financing constraints, and innovation, we show that non-pecuniary compensation is particularly relevant in discussions of small businesses.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2015.