We use confidential and restricted-access data from the Kauffman Firm Survey and matched administrative data on credit scores to explore racial disparities in access to capital for new business ventures. The novel results on racial inequality in startup financing indicate that black-owned...

We examine racial and gender differences in the intention to start a business and steps taken along the path to starting a business. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to consider starting businesses; however, conditional on doing so, they are much less likely to launch the business. Black,...

This paper presents some of the first large-scale survey evidence linking optimism to major economic choices. We create a novel measure of optimism using the Survey of Consumer Finance by comparing a person's self-reported life expectancy to that implied by statistical tables. Optimists are more...