We establish a correlation between the hierarchical structure of a firm and the likelihood of business creation among its former employees, using a sample of 16 million observations of Swedish workers and a novel proxy for hierarchies based on occupation data. Conditional on firm size and many...

We explore whether the tendency for smaller firms to have fewer hierarchical layers explains the well-documented inverse correlation between firm size and the rate at which employees become business owners. Our analysis is based on a Swedish matched employer-employee dataset. Conditional on firm...

Recent research has shown that entrepreneurs who start incorporated firms are fundamentally different from entrepreneurs who start sole proprietorships. This difference suggests that incorporation status may distinguish the self-employed with no ambition to hire from entrepreneurs who plan to...

We document in two very different datasets an inverted U-shaped relationship between work experience and entrepreneurship among movers. The first dataset consists of 1,248, U.S. lawyers who were forced to seek alternative employment after the sudden dissolutions of their employers. The second...

We cast entrepreneurship as one of three career choices – remaining with one's employer, changing employers, or engaging in entrepreneurship – and theorize how the likelihood of entrepreneurship evolves over one's career. We empirically demonstrate an inverted U-shaped relationship between...