Entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy: Evidence from U.S. Tax Returns

We thank Paul Beaumont, Greg Buchak, Tony Cookson, Mike Ewens, Slava Fos, Yael Hochberg, Johan Hombert, Edith Hotchkiss, Katrin Hussinger, Emilie Jackson, Ankit Kalda, William Kerr, Cameron LaPoint, Tong Liu, David Robinson, David Sovich, Rick Townsend, Melanie Wallskog, Sheng-Jun Xu, Ting Xu, and Hanyi (Livia) Yi and conference participants at CEPR Endless Summer, CMU-Pitt-Penn State, Corporate Finance Day, Craig Holden Memorial Finance, ECB-CEPR Labour Market, FIRS, FOM, FSU SunTrust Beach, Labor and Finance Group, LBS Summer Finance, MFA, Munich Summer Institute, NBER Entrepreneurship, NFA, Northeastern University, RCFS Winter, Red Rock, and WFA, and seminar participants at the Bank of Greece, Boston College, Drexel University, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Oregon, University of Oxford, University of Rochester, and U.S. Department of Treasury for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Block Center for Technology and Society, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. This research is conducted through the Joint Statistical Research Program of the Statistics of Income Division of the IRS. Terry Cheng, Caitlin Hartley, Casey Li, Maxwell Sacher, Jacob Triplett, and Collin Zoeller provided excellent research assistance. We thank many people at the IRS for their assistance with and support of our research, including Anne Herlache, Alicia Miller, and Tomas Wind. The views and opinions presented in this paper reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or the official position of the Internal Revenue Service. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.