IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v112y2004i2p319-347.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, and Entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Hurst
  • Annamaria Lusardi

Abstract

The propensity to become a business owner is a nonlinear function of wealth. The relationship between wealth and entry into entrepreneurship is essentially flat over the majority of the wealth distribution. It is only at the top of the wealth distributionafter the ninety-fifth percentilethat a positive relationship can be found. Segmenting businesses into industries with high and lowstarting capital requirements, we find no evidence that wealth matters more for businesses requiring higher initial capital. When using inheritances as an instrument for wealth, we find that both past and future inheritances predict current business entry, showing that inheritances capture more than simply liquidity. We further exploit the regional variation in house prices and find that households that lived in regions in which housing prices appreciated strongly were no more likely to start a business than households in other regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Hurst & Annamaria Lusardi, 2004. "Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, and Entrepreneurship," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(2), pages 319-347, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:112:y:2004:i:2:p:319-347
    DOI: 10.1086/381478
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/381478
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Evans, David S & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1989. "An Estimated Model of Entrepreneurial Choice under Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 808-827, August.
    2. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst, 2003. "The Correlation of Wealth across Generations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(6), pages 1155-1182, December.
    3. Fairlie, Robert W, 1999. "The Absence of the African-American Owned Business: An Analysis of the Dynamics of Self-Employment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 80-108, January.
    4. Bruce D. Meyer, 1990. "Why Are There So Few Black Entrepreneurs?," NBER Working Papers 3537, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. 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.
    6. Joseph G. Altonji & Thomas A. Dunn, 2000. "An Intergenerational Model of Wages, Hours, and Earnings," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 35(2), pages 221-258.
    7. Engelhardt, Gary V., 1996. "House prices and home owner saving behavior," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 313-336, June.
    8. Juster, F. Thomas & Smith, James P. & Stafford, Frank, 1999. "The measurement and structure of household wealth," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 253-275, June.
    9. Tobias J. Moskowitz & Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, 2002. "The Returns to Entrepreneurial Investment: A Private Equity Premium Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 745-778, September.
    10. Vincenzo Quadrini, 1999. "The Importance Of Entrepreneurship For Wealth Concentration And Mobility," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 45(1), pages 1-19, March.
    11. Barton H. Hamilton, 2000. "Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns to Self-Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 604-631, June.
    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. Steffen Andersen & Kasper Meisner Nielsen, 2012. "Ability or Finances as Constraints on Entrepreneurship? Evidence from Survival Rates in a Natural Experiment," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(12), pages 3684-3710.
    2. Robert W. Fairlie & Harry A. Krashinsky, 2012. "Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, And Entrepreneurship Revisited," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 58(2), pages 279-306, June.
    3. Popov, Alexander & Corradin, Stefano, 2013. "House prices, home equity and entrepreneurships," Working Paper Series 1544, European Central Bank.
    4. Clemens, Christiane & Heinemann, Maik, 2010. "On entrepreneurial risk-taking and the macroeconomic effects of financial constraints," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1610-1626, September.
    5. Nadia Simoes & Nuno Crespo & Sandrina B. Moreira, 2016. "Individual Determinants Of Self-Employment Entry: What Do We Really Know?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 783-806, September.
    6. Ross Levine & Yona Rubinstein, 2018. "Selection into Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment," NBER Working Papers 25350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Stefano Corradin, 2013. "House Prices, Household Leverage, and Entrepreneurship," 2013 Meeting Papers 631, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Earle, John S. & Sakova, Zuzana, 1999. "Entrepreneurship from Scratch: Lessons on the Entry Decision into Self-Employment from Transition Economies," IZA Discussion Papers 79, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Camilo Mondragón-Vélez & Ximena Peña, 2010. "Business Ownership and Self-Employment in Developing Economies: The Colombian Case," NBER Chapters, in: International Differences in Entrepreneurship, pages 89-127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Camilo Mondragón-Vélez, 2009. "The probability of transition to entrepreneurship revisited: wealth, education and age," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 421-441, June.
    11. Kevin B. Moore, 2004. "Do liquidity constraints matter for new entrepreneurs?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2004-42, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Vincenzo Quadrini, 2009. "Entrepreneurship in macroeconomics," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 295-311, June.
    13. Joanna Georgios Alexopoulos & Anne Villamil, 2014. "The Effects Of Frictions In The Labormarket On Entrepreneurship And Economic Development," Anais do XL Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 40th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 045, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    14. Yannis Georgellis & Howard Wall, 2005. "Gender differences in self-employment," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 321-342.
    15. Michael Hout & Harvey Rosen, 2000. "Self-Employment, Family Background, and Race," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 35(4), pages 670-692.
    16. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Rosen, Harvey S & Weathers, Robert, 2000. "Horatio Alger Meets the Mobility Tables," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 243-274, June.
    17. P. Köllinger & M. Minniti, 2006. "Not for Lack of Trying: American Entrepreneurship in Black and White," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 59-79, August.
    18. Disney, Richard & Gathergood, John, 2009. "Housing wealth, liquidity constraints and self-employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 79-88, January.
    19. Maik Heinemann & Christiane Clemens, 2007. "Credit Constraints, Entrepreneurial Activity, and Occupational Choice under Risk," 2007 Meeting Papers 416, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. David B. Audretsch & Dirk Dohse & Annekatrin Niebuhr, 2015. "Regional unemployment structure and new firm formation," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94, pages 115-138, November.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jpolec:v:112:y:2004:i:2:p:319-347. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Journals Division). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.