Article
Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur? The impacts of skills developed before, during and after college on firm start-ups
IZA Journal of Labor Economics
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
1-1-2015
DOI
10.1186/s40172-015-0023-7
Abstract
By allowing agents to switch from entrepreneurship to wage work and vice versa over the life cycle, this study proposes a dynamic Jacks-of-All-Trades (JAT) model where entrepreneurs invest in highly varied skills to manage their business. We simultaneously endogenize human capital investment and occupational decisions. Using the survey data of Iowa State alumni graduating between 1982 and 2006, we find that the probability of selecting a broad curriculum, having a more varied career, and becoming an entrepreneur are jointly positively correlated. Academic diversity is found to be initially important in starting a business shortly after completing schooling, but its importance declines over time.
Rights
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
Copyright Owner
Orazem et al
Copyright Date
2015
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Peter F Orazem, Robert Jolly and Li Yu. "Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur? The impacts of skills developed before, during and after college on firm start-ups" IZA Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 4 Iss. 9 (2015) p. 1 - 27 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter-orazem/64/
This is an article from IZA Journal of Labor Economics 4 (2015): 1, doi: 10.1186/s40172-015-0023-7. Posted with permission.