IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/1050.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does College Education Reduce Small Business Failure?

Author

Listed:
  • Asoni, Andrea

    (Charles River Associates)

  • Sanandaji, Tino

    (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))

Abstract

We estimate the effect of college education on business survival using the NLSY79. The endogeneity of both education and business ownership is accounted for by a competing risks duration model augmented with a college selection equation. Contrary to the previous literature, we fi…nd no effect of college education on business failure. College however signi…cantly increases “employment survival.” Unlike college, cognitive skills have a positive impact on employment survival for both the self-employed and employees. The results suggest that college affects the self-employed and salaried employees in different ways, for example generating skills more useful in employment than self-employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Asoni, Andrea & Sanandaji, Tino, 2014. "Does College Education Reduce Small Business Failure?," Working Paper Series 1050, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1050
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp1050.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mirjam Praag & Arjen van Witteloostuijn & Justin van der Sluis, 2013. "The higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs versus employees," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 375-396, February.
    2. De Wit, Gerrit & Van Winden, Frans A. A. M., 1990. "An empirical analysis of self-employment in the Netherlands," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 97-100, January.
    3. Curtis Eberwein & John C. Ham & Robert J. Lalonde, 1997. "The Impact of Being Offered and Receiving Classroom Training on the Employment Histories of Disadvantaged Women: Evidence from Experimental Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(4), pages 655-682.
    4. José Millán & Emilio Congregado & Concepción Román, 2012. "Erratum to: Determinants of self-employment survival in Europe," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 259-263, February.
    5. Unger, Jens M. & Rauch, Andreas & Frese, Michael & Rosenbusch, Nina, 2011. "Human capital and entrepreneurial success: A meta-analytical review," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 341-358, May.
    6. Joop Hartog & Mirjam Van Praag & Justin Van Der Sluis, 2010. "If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You an Entrepreneur? Returns to Cognitive and Social Ability: Entrepreneurs Versus Employees," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 947-989, December.
    7. Mirjam van Praag & Arjen van Witteloostuijn & Justin van der Sluis, 2009. "Returns for Entrepreneurs versus Employees: The Effect of Education and Personal Control on the Relative Performance of Entrepreneurs vis-a-vis Wage Employees," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 09-111/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Davis, Steven J & Haltiwanger, John & Schuh, Scott, 1996. "Small Business and Job Creation: Dissecting the Myth and Reassessing the Facts," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 297-315, August.
    9. van Praag, Mirjam C. & van Witteloostuijn, Arjen & van der Sluis, Justin, 2009. "Returns for Entrepreneurs vs. Employees: The Effect of Education and Personal Control on the Relative Performance of Entrepreneurs vs. Wage Employees," IZA Discussion Papers 4628, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Peter Arcidiacono & Patrick Bayer & Aurel Hizmo, 2010. "Beyond Signaling and Human Capital: Education and the Revelation of Ability," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 76-104, October.
    11. BodenJR., Richard J. & Nucci, Alfred R., 2000. "On the survival prospects of men's and women's new business ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 347-362, July.
    12. Panagiotis Ganotakis, 2012. "Founders’ human capital and the performance of UK new technology based firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 495-515, September.
    13. Patrick J. Bayer & Peter Arcidiacono & Aurel Hizmo, 2010. "Web Appendix: Beyond Signaling and Human Capital: Education and the Revelation of Ability," Working Papers 10-52, Duke University, Department of Economics.
    14. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    15. Ham, John C & LaLonde, Robert J, 1996. "The Effect of Sample Selection and Initial Conditions in Duration Models: Evidence from Experimental Data on Training," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(1), pages 175-205, January.
    16. Davidsson, Per & Honig, Benson, 2003. "The role of social and human capital among nascent entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 301-331, May.
    17. Justin Van Der Sluis & Mirjam Van Praag & Wim Vijverberg, 2008. "Education And Entrepreneurship Selection And Performance: A Review Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 795-841, December.
    18. José Millán & Emilio Congregado & Concepción Román, 2012. "Determinants of self-employment survival in Europe," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 231-258, February.
    19. Evans, David S & Leighton, Linda S, 1989. "Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 519-535, June.
    20. Heckman, James J. & Singer, Burton, 1984. "Econometric duration analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 63-132.
    21. C. Mirjam van Praag, 2003. "Business Survival and Success of Young Small Business Owners," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-050/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    22. Lin, Zhengxi & Picot, Garnett & Compton, Janice, 2000. "The Entry and Exit Dynamics of Self-Employment in Canada," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 105-125, September.
    23. Macpherson, David A., 1988. "Self-employment and married women," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 281-284.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrea Asoni & Tino Sanandaji, 2016. "Identifying the effect of college education on business and employment survival," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 311-324, February.
    2. Millán, José María & Congregado, Emilio & Román, Concepción, 2014. "Persistence in entrepreneurship and its implications for the European entrepreneurial promotion policy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 83-106.
    3. Jose Maria Millan & Emilio Congregado & Concepcion Roman & Mirjam van Praag & Andre van Stel, 2011. "The Value of an Educated Population for an Individual's Entrepreneurship Success," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-066/3, Tinbergen Institute, revised 06 May 2014.
    4. Román, Concepción & Congregado, Emilio & Millán, José María, 2013. "Start-up incentives: Entrepreneurship policy or active labour market programme?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 151-175.
    5. Burke, Andrew & Millán, José María & Román, Concepción & van Stel, André, 2018. "Exploring the impact of different types of prior entrepreneurial experience on employer firm performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 107-122.
    6. Thomas Ã…stebro & Kevyn Yong, 2016. "Invention Quality and Entrepreneurial Earnings: The Role of Prior Employment Variety," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(2), pages 381-400, March.
    7. Fossen, Frank M. & Büttner, Tobias J.M., 2013. "The returns to education for opportunity entrepreneurs, necessity entrepreneurs, and paid employees," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 66-84.
    8. Cheng, Zhiming & Smyth, Russell, 2021. "Education and migrant entrepreneurship in urban China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 506-529.
    9. Guido Buenstorf & Kristian Nielsen & Bram Timmermans, 2017. "Steve Jobs or No Jobs? Entrepreneurial activity and performance among Danish college dropouts and graduates," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 179-197, January.
    10. Magnus Lofstrom, 2013. "Does self-employment increase the economic well-being of low-skilled workers?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 933-952, May.
    11. José María Millán & Emilio Congregado & Concepción Román, 2010. "Determinants of Self-Employment Dynamics and their Implications on Entrepreneurial Policy Effectiveness," Lecturas de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, Departamento de Economía, issue 72, pages 45-76.
    12. Simon C. Parker & Yacine Belghitar, 2006. "What Happens to Nascent Entrepreneurs? An Econometric Analysis of the PSED," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 81-101, August.
    13. Bird, Miriam & Wennberg, Karl, 2016. "Why family matters: The impact of family resources on immigrant entrepreneurs' exit from entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 687-704.
    14. Justin Van Der Sluis & Mirjam Van Praag & Wim Vijverberg, 2008. "Education And Entrepreneurship Selection And Performance: A Review Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 795-841, December.
    15. Isabel Grilo & Roy Thurik, 2008. "Determinants of entrepreneurial engagement levels in Europe and the US," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 17(6), pages 1113-1145, December.
    16. Michelacci, Claudio & Schivardi, Fabiano, 2020. "Are they all like Bill, Mark, and Steve? The education premium for entrepreneurs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Michael Stuetzer & Martin Obschonka & Eva Schmitt-Rodermund, 2013. "Balanced skills among nascent entrepreneurs," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 93-114, June.
    18. Parker, Simon C., 2013. "Do serial entrepreneurs run successively better-performing businesses?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 652-666.
    19. Roy Thurik & Isabel Grilo, 2005. "Latent and actual entrepreneurship in Europe and the US: some recent developments," Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy 2005-24, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group.
    20. André van Stel & Andrew Burke & José Maria Millán & Concepcion Roman, 2013. "Start-Up Size Strategy and Risk Management: Impact on New Venture Performance," Scales Research Reports H201207, EIM Business and Policy Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Selection; Entrepreneurship; College Education; Intelligence; Self-con…dence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C41 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Duration Analysis; Optimal Timing Strategies
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1050. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.