The DNA of Enterprise: Genetic Endowments, Entrepreneurship and Intergenerational Mobility

Are entrepreneurs born or made? We study how genetic endowments shape entrepreneurship, intergenerational mobility, and wealth concentration by combining polygenic scores with a structural overlapping-generations model. Combining data from Understanding Society and the National Child Development Study, we show that genetic endowments related to educational attainment and risk tolerance predict entrepreneurial selection and entrepreneurial earnings. We develop and estimate a model in which genetic endowments affect pre-market skill formation, preferences, and occupation- specific returns, while parents influence children through genetic transmission, time investments, and cash transfers. We find that genetic heterogeneity accounts for a substantial share of intergenerational persistence (roughly 20–35 percent across earnings, consumption, and income ranks) and plays an important role in the formation of entrepreneurial dynasties. At the individual level, genetic endowments explain a modest but economically meaningful share of lifetime income variation, with effects that are twice as large among entrepreneurs as among wage workers. In counterfactual policy experiments, we compare financing wealth through credit expansion with financing talent through venture-capital intermediation. Holding fixed the amount of capital supplied, financing talent generates greater intergenerational mobility and higher aggregate output than financing wealth, but at the cost of higher inequality.