The Racial Gap in Entrepreneurship and Business Ownership

为什么美国黑人拥有的企业这么少？该项目首先记录了这种种族差距，其数据比以前研究的数据更新和全面得多。该项目将利用纵向商业数据研究公司动态，将差距分解为不同所有者种族的创业率和退出率的差异。一个重要的重点将是了解黑人拥有的企业生存率较低，特别是在他们的早期，脆弱的几年。该项目将分析种族差异的原因，包括所有者人力资本和企业特征，关键假设是黑人企业家面临的更严格的财务约束降低了他们公司的生存率。该项目将估计信贷计划对企业生存的因果影响，这些信贷计划可能会增加黑人企业主的金融渠道。通过这些方式，该项目将有助于了解创业和企业所有权方面的种族差距，这是一个重要的，但很少研究更广泛的种族不平等问题的组成部分。该项目为分析种族差距带来了新的数据和方法。人口普查局微观数据的使用是比以前工作的一个进步，因为公司一级更好的数据已经逐渐出现，该项目将把这些数据合并成一个新的纵向数据库，其中有关于所有者和公司的一套丰富的变量。使用面板数据集按种族分析公司动态的差异几乎没有先例，并允许研究以一种即使不是不可能也很困难的方式关注生存的关键结果。丰富的数据使人们能够评估企业家的特点，包括他们的动机和选择，影响生存结果的作用。该项目还开发了创新的识别策略，基于面板回归，匹配，工具变量和回归不连续方法，用于评估财务约束在企业生存中的作用，利用来自两个程序的数据进行合理的外生变化：小企业管理局的7（a）贷款计划和社区再投资法案。该项目得到了创新伙伴关系（PFI）的联合支持科学的科学：发现、交流和影响计划（SOS：DCI）。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Why are there so few Black-owned businesses in the U.S.? This project first documents this racial gap with much more recent and comprehensive data than have been studied previously. Using longitudinal business data, the project will study firm dynamics, decomposing the gap into differences in start-up and exit rates by owner race. An important focus will be understanding the lower survival rates in Black-owned businesses, especially in their early, vulnerable years. The project will analyze causes of racial differences, including owner human capital and firm characteristics, with the key hypothesis that tougher financial constraints faced by Black entrepreneurs reduce the survival rate of their firms. The project will estimate the causal effects on firm survival of credit programs that may increase financial access for Black business owners. In these ways, the project will contribute to understanding the racial gap in entrepreneurship and business ownership, which is a crucial, but little studied component of the broader issue of racial inequality.The project brings new data and methods to analyzing the racial gap. The use of Census Bureau micro-data represents an advance over previous work, as much better data at the firm-level have gradually become available, and the project will knit them together into a new longitudinal database with a rich set of variables on owners and firms. The analysis of differences in firm dynamics by race using a panel dataset has little precedent and allows the research to focus on the key outcome of survival in a way that is difficult if not impossible with only a cross-section. The rich data enable an assessment of the roles of characteristics of entrepreneurs, including their motivations and choices, impacting survival outcomes. The project also develops innovative identification strategies, based on panel regression, matching, instrumental variable, and regression discontinuity methods, for assessing the role of financial constraints in firm survival, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation using data from two programs: the Small Business Administration’s 7(a) loan program and the Community Reinvestment Act.This project was jointly supported by the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) and Science of Science: Discovery, Communication, and Impact Programs (SOS:DCI).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.