Full Citation
Title: From Rags to Riches: How Robust is the Influence of Culture on Entrepreneurial Activity?
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2010
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: Entrepreneurial activity diers substantially across countries. Whilecultural dierences have often been proposed as an explanation, mea-suring a country's cultural characteristics suers from various problems.In this paper, we test the hypothesis that cultural factors inuence en-trepreneurial behavior by looking at dierences in self-employment ratesbetween immigrant groups within the same market. Such an approachallows holding constant factors such as the institutional and economic en-vironment. Using U.S. census data for the year 2000, we nd signicantdierences in the propensity to become self-employed across immigrantswhich is in line with previous ndings. However, previous studies couldnot relate self-employment rates in the U.S. to self-employment shares inthe immigrants' home-countries which rejects cultural explanations. Weimprove over the existing literature by rst using a more reasonable proxyfor self-employment shares. Second, we additionally account for determi-nants of self-employment in the immigrants' home countries. Both of thesemodications reverse the inuence of home-country determinants com-pared with previous ndings. Once we apply our modications, we ndevidence of a signicantly positive relationship between self-employmentrates of immigrants in the U.S. and entrepreneurial activity in their re-spective countries of origin. Our ndings suggest that we cannot rejectculture as a major determinant of entrepreneurial activity.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Busch, Christian; Lassmann, Andrea
Series Title:
Publication Number: 267
Institution: KOF Swiss Economic Institute
Pages:
Publisher Location:
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Other, Poverty and Welfare
Countries: