TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blanchflower,David
AU  - Oswald,Andrew J.
TI  - What Makes an Entrepreneur? Evidence on Inheritance and Capital Constraints
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3252
PY  - 1990
Y2  - February 1990
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3252
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3252.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David G. Blanchflower
Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH  03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2536
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: David.G.Blanchflower@Dartmouth.EDU

Andrew Oswald
Department of Economics
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
England
Tel: 44-01203-5235
Fax: 44-01203-5230
E-Mail: a.j.oswald@warwick.ac.uk
AB  - The paper studies the factors which shape entrepreneurship among young adults. It finds, using data on a British birth cohort, that the probability of self-employment depends sensitively upon whether the individual ever received a gift or inheritance. Those who were given or  inherited £5,000, for example, were approximately twice as likely, ceteris paribus, to set up in business. This is consistent with, and a new test of, recent results from the US stressing the importance of capital and liquidity constraints. The paper also evaluates a number of hypotheses suggested in the literature on small businesses.
ER  -