Families and Entrepreneurship

新企业是经济增长的重要引擎。他们为市场带来创新的想法、产品和服务。有大量的经济学文献研究什么因素或情况促进或阻止创业。由于新企业往往需要不可忽视的启动资金，一个关键的问题是，缺乏资源或无法借款可能会阻止一些潜在的突破性企业的出现。在许多国家或行业中，风险资本要么缺失，要么往往忽视妇女和少数群体的项目。从公平的角度来看，这些问题对于那些有才华但资金不足的人来说可能尤为严重。本研究调查父母给成年子女的遗赠或礼物是否会减轻正式的信贷约束，促进商业创造。它还研究了家族融资企业是否比通过其他方式创建的企业更持久，更有利可图。这些问题的答案可以用来理解几代人之间的利他主义在多大程度上可以替代功能不良的信贷市场，以及"失踪企业家"问题的重要性。这项研究之所以成为可能，是因为有关于代际转移的丰富的行政数据、关于捐助者和受援者的社会人口信息，以及包括新企业开始日期在内的丰富的企业业绩指标。这些数据不仅提供了一个机会来测试父母转移对于解释新企业创造的重要性，而且还可以测试家族资助的公司是否比通过更传统的渠道创建的公司更有效率。特别是，该研究调查了父母转移是否反映了比正规信贷市场更好的（软）信息，而不是纯粹的消费品;它还调查了这种转移，通过对新创建的企业施加更多的家庭主导结构，最终是否可能对其业绩产生负面影响。实证分析的结果被用来作为输入到一个理论模型，明确利他主义之间的联系，跨代，信贷市场的不完善，和职业选择。本研究将该模型作为实验室，研究遗产税的变化、政府贷款担保计划的扩大和/或重组、政府对老年风险的覆盖等各种经济政策的效果。后者是利他主义父母面临的重要权衡的一个例子--他们经常在为给子女留下遗产而储蓄和为自己的长期医疗费用而储蓄之间左右为难。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

New businesses are important engines of economic growth. They bring innovative ideas, products, and services to the marketplace. There is a large literature in economics that studies what factors or situations facilitate or prevent entrepreneurship. Since new businesses often require non-negligible starting capital, a key concern is that lack of resources or inability to borrow may prevent some potentially ground-breaking enterprises from emerging. In many countries or industries, venture capital is either missing or tends to overlook projects by women and minorities. From an equity perspective, these may be particularly acute issues for individuals rich in talent but poor in funds. This research investigates whether bequests or gifts from parents to their adult children mitigate formal credit constraints and facilitate business creation. It also studies whether family-financed firms last longer and are more profitable than those created through other means. Answers to these questions can be used to understand to what extent altruism across generations can act as a substitute for poorly functioning credit markets and the importance of the problem of “missing entrepreneurs.”This research is made possible by the availability of rich administrative data on intergenerational transfers, socio-demographic information about donors and recipients, and rich measures of business performance, including the date the new business started. The data offer the opportunity not only to test how important parental transfers are for explaining new business creation, but also to test whether family-funded companies are more or less efficient than those created through more traditional channels. In particular, the research investigates whether parental transfers reflect better (soft) information than that available to formal credit markets as opposed to being a pure consumption good; it also investigates whether such transfers, by imposing a more family-led structure on the newly created business, may end up having a negative impact on its performance. The findings from the empirical analysis are used as inputs into a theoretical model that makes explicit the linkages between altruism across generations, credit market imperfections, and occupational choices. The research uses the model as a laboratory for studying the effect of various economic policies, such as changes in estate taxation, expansion and/or restructuring of governmental loan guarantee programs, and government coverage of old-age risks. The latter are an example of the important trade-offs faced by altruistic parents – often torn between saving for leaving bequests to their children and saving for covering their own long-term health care costs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.