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。经济学中有大量文献研究哪些因素或情况促进或阻碍了创业。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碍一些潜在的突破性企业的出现。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民族的项目。从公平的角度来看，对于那些人才丰富但资金匮乏的个人来说，这些问题可能尤其严重。本研究调查了父母给其成年子女的遗赠或礼物是否减轻了正式的信贷限制，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。这些问题的答案可以用来理解跨代利他主义在多大程度上可以替代运作不良的信贷市场，以及“缺失的企业家”问题的重要性。这项研究之所以能够进行，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统计资料以及包括新企业开办日期在内的丰富的企业业绩衡量标准。这些数据提供了一个机会，不仅可以测试父母转移对解释新企业创建的重要性，还可以测试家族投资企业的效率是否高于或低于通过更传统渠道创建的企业。特别是，该研究调查了父母转移是否比正式信贷市场提供的（软）信息更好，而不是纯粹的消费商品；它还调查了这样的转移，通过在新创建的企业中施加更多的家族主导结构，是否最终会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，该模型明确了代际利他主义、信贷市场不完善和职业选择之间的联系。该研究将该模型作为实验室，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。后者是无私父母面临的重要权衡的一个例子——他们经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。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.