Computer and Internet use, especially in developing countries, has expanded rapidly in recent years. Even in light of this expansion in technology adoption rates, penetration rates differ markedly between developed and developing countries and across developing countries. To identify the...

Only a few large, nationally-representative datasets include information on both the owner and the business. We briefly describe several of the most respected and up-to-date sources of data on entrepreneurs, the self-employed, and small businesses. More information including estimates of recent...

Nearly a quarter of Mexico's workforce is self-employed. In the United States, however, rates of self-employment among Mexican Americans are only 6 percent, about half the rate among non-Latino whites. Using data from the Mexican and U.S. population census, we show that neither industrial...

Nearly twenty million children in the United States do not have computers in their homes. The role of home computers in the educational process, however, has drawn very little attention in the previous literature. We use panel data from the two main U.S. datasets that include recent information...

The focus on employer-provided health insurance in the United States may restrict business creation. We address the limited research on the topic of "entrepreneurship lock" by using recent panel data from matched Current Population Surveys. We use difference-indifference models to estimate the...

Employer-provided health insurance may restrict job mobility, resulting in "job lock." Previous research on job lock finds mixed results using several methodologies. We take a new approach to examine job-lock by exploiting the discontinuity created at age 65 through the qualification for...

Immigrants are widely perceived as being highly entrepreneurial and important for economic growth and innovation. This is reflected in immigration policies and many developed countries have created special visas and entry requirements in an attempt to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Not...

In the 1980s, many U.S. cities initiated programs reserving a proportion of government contracts for minority-owned businesses. The staggered introduction of these set-aside programs is used to estimate their impacts on the self-employment and employment rates of African-American men. Black...

Computers are an important part of modern education, yet large segments of the population – especially low-income and minority children – lack access to a computer at home. Does this impede educational achievement? We test this hypothesis by conducting the largest-ever field experiment...

The economic expansion of the late 1990s created many opportunities for business creation in Silicon Valley, but the opportunity cost of starting a business was also high during this period because of the exceptionally tight labor market. A new measure of entrepreneurship derived from matching...