Families and Entrepreneurship

新业务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。经济学中有大量文献研究哪些因素或情况促进或阻碍创业。由于新企业往往需要不可忽视的启动资本，一个关键的担忧是，缺乏资源或无法借款，可能会阻止一些潜在的开创性企业涌现。在许多国家或行业，风险资本要么缺失，要么往往忽视妇女和少数族裔的项目。从股票的角度来看，对于才华横溢但资金匮乏的个人来说，这些可能是特别尖锐的问题。这项研究调查了父母赠送给成年子女的遗产或礼物是否缓解了正规的信贷限制，并促进了企业的创建。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持续时间更长，利润更高。对这些问题的回答可以用来理解跨代利他主义在多大程度上可以取代运转不佳的信贷市场，以及“企业家失踪”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行政数据，关于捐赠者和接受者的社会人口信息，以及丰富的商业业绩衡量标准，包括新企业开始运营的日期。这些数据不仅提供了测试父母转移对于解释新业务创建的重要性的机会，还提供了测试家族投资公司比通过更传统渠道创建的公司效率更高还是更低的机会。特别是，这项研究调查了父母转移是否比正规信贷市场提供的信息更好(软)，而不是纯粹的消费商品；它还调查了这种转移是否通过将更多的家庭主导结构强加给新创建的企业，最终可能对其业绩产生负面影响。实证分析的结果被用作一个理论模型的输入，该模型明确了跨代利他主义、信贷市场缺陷和职业选择之间的联系。该研究利用该模型作为实验室，研究各种经济政策的影响，如遗产税的变化、政府贷款担保计划的扩大和/或重组，以及政府对养老风险的覆盖。后者是利他主义父母面临的重要权衡的一个例子--通常在为给孩子留下遗产而存钱和为支付自己的长期医疗费用而存钱之间左右为难。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.