This paper shows that collateral constraints restrict firm entry and post-entry growth, even in the long-run. We use French administrative data and exploit cross-sectional variation in local house-price appreciation as shocks to the value of collateral available to homeowners. We control for...

Since 2003, the French unemployment insurance system provides downside insurance to eligible unemployed workers who decide to start a business. We evaluate how this policy change affects entry into self-employment. The reform significantly increases firm creation without worsening the quality of...

Robustness checks, such as adding controls or sample splits, are a standard feature of reduced-form empirical research. Because of computational costs of reestimating alternative models, they are much less common in structural re- search using simulation-based methods. We propose a simple...