Entrepreneurship Among Married Couples in the United States: A Simultaneous Probit Approach

By Simon C. Parker. Social Science Research Network, 2008

118 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article proposes a simultaneous probit equation framework to analyse the business ownership patterns of married couples in the United States. A structural model of knowledge spillovers within couples is formulated and estimated. Empirical analysis reveals significant and substantial positive interdependence of business ownership propensities within couples. We argue that the evidence is consistent with both male and female spouses receiving positive knowledge transfers from the other. Conversely, there appears to be little support for alternative explanations of interdependent occupational choices based on assortative mating, role model effects, risk diversification, or intrahousehold wealth transfers. We conclude that the conventional practice of ignoring occupational interdependence can generate misleading conclusions about the determinants of business ownership in America.

Subfields: Demography, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f81ec4928bc38b423fb78ed6a28d15b494ac39e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Demography

1. Harry Krashinsky
2. R. Costa
3. R. Fairlie
4. M. Falk
5. T. Leoni
6. Bob Rijkers
7. M. van Praag
8. Simon C. Parker

In Gender Studies

1. Harry Krashinsky
2. R. Costa
3. R. Fairlie
4. M. Falk
5. T. Leoni
6. Bob Rijkers
7. M. van Praag
8. Simon C. Parker

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Simon C. Parker
2. R. Fairlie
3. M. Falk
4. T. Leoni
5. Harry Krashinsky
6. R. Costa
7. Bob Rijkers
8. M. van Praag

Citations in the corpus

• The effect of early entrepreneurship education: Evidence from a field experiment (2014, background): “26 However, the empirical evidence is rather mixed, including contradicting (e.g. Brockhaus, 1980), non-linear (Caliendo et al., 2010) and insignificant results (e.g. Parker, 2008).”
• Gender and Rural Non-Farm Entrepreneurship (2012, background): “Literature from developed countries furthermore suggests that entrepreneurship is often intergenerationally transmitted; children of entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves (Parker, 2008, 2009).”
• Individual Determinants of Self-Employment Entry – What Do We Really Know? (2013, unknown): “The risk diversification explanation suggests that self-employed workers usually face high levels of financial uncertainty and, therefore, couples may wish to diversify risk through the combination of different types of employment (Parker, 2008).”
• Gender and field of study as determinants of self-employment (2010, background): “Taniguchi (2002) claims that marriage is a significant facilitator of SE. Parker (2007) develops a framework in which a wife and husband mutually reinforce each other’s decision to become selfemployed.”
• Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, and Entrepreneurship Revisited (2012, background): “See Holtz-Eakin et al. (1996), Fairlie (1999), Bruce (2000), Bradford (2003), Holtz-Eakin and Rosen (2005), and Parker (2008) for a few examples.”
• Why are some people more likely to become small-businesses owners than others: Entrepreneurship entry and industry-specific barriers (2014, background): “Married men are particularly likely to become self-employed, perhaps because they have greater opportunities to specialise in high-potential enterprises while relying on their wives to specialise in household production (Hundley, 2000; Parker, 2008).”