- A-Z
- Jena Economic Resea...
- Volume 2
- Occupational Choice...
- Autor(in)
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Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät
- Erschienen
- 20. Oktober 2008
- Nummer des Discussion-Papers
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2008-079
- Schlagwort(e)
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Entrepreneurship
Occupational Choice
Social Contacts
- Zusammenfsg.
-
This paper tests the importance of social contacts on entrepreneurship. To measure differences in the interconnectedness of social contacts, we compare rural and agglomerated areas. A smaller community size in rural areas generates greater network closure. Agents’ neighborhoods are more likely to overlap, which intensifies social contacts and thus facilitates resource mobilization. Analyzing the impact of social contacts across regions, we find that greater network closure increases the likelihood of being an entrepreneur by 1.9 to 14.2 percentage points, depending on the number of underlying social contacts. These results remain robust after applying matching techniques and concentrating on young entrepreneurs.
- article pub. typess JER
- Research article
- article languages JER
- Englisch
- article research fields JER
- entrepreneurship
- JEL-Classification for JER
- J24 - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Z13 - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology