Taxation and the Quality of Entrepreneurship

We study the effect of taxation on entrepreneurship, taking into account both the amount of entry and the quality of new ventures. We show that even with risk neutral agents and no tax evasion progressive taxes can increase entrepreneurial entry, while reducing average firm quality. So called "success taxes" increase startup of lower value business ideas by reducing the option value of pursuing better projects. This suggests that the most common measure used in the literature, the likelihood of entry into self-employment, may underestimate the adverse effect of taxation.Taxation; Entrepreneurial Entry; Quality of Entrepreneurial Firms

Institutional Entrepreneurship: An Introduction

In this introductory chapter to a collective volume,* we build on Baumol’s (1990) framework to categorize, catalog, and classify the budding research field that explores the interplay between institutions and entrepreneurship. Institutions channel entrepreneurial supply into productive or unproductive activities, which likely accounts for a great deal of the disparate economic development of nations. What’s more, entrepreneurship is not only influenced by institutions—entrepreneurs often shape institutions themselves. Entrepreneurship abiding by existing institutions is occasionally disruptive enough to challenge the foundations of prevailing institutions. Entrepreneurs also have the opportunity to evade institutions, which tends to undermine the effectiveness of the institutions in question, or cause them to change for the better. Lastly, entrepreneurs can directly alter institutions through innovative political entrepreneurship. Similar to business entrepreneurship, innovative political activity can be either productive or unproductive, depending on the entrepreneurs’ incentives.Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Institutions; Property rights; Regulation; Self-employment

Billionaires

Existing studies of entrepreneurship focus on entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is typically trivial: self-employed persons. This paper investigates entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is enormous: billionaires. We explore the relationship between economic development, institutions, and these contrasting kinds of entrepreneurs. We find that the institutions consistent with self-employed entrepreneurs di¤er markedly from the ones consistent with billionaires. Further, only the latter are consistent with the institutions that underlie economic prosperity. Where well-protected private property rights and supporting, market-enhancing institutions flourish, so do billionaires. But self-employed entrepreneurs don't. Where private property rights are weakly protected and interventionist institutions flourish, so do self-employed entrepreneurs. But billionaires don't.Billionaires; Entrepreneurship; Self-employment; Institutions

The Interaction of Entrepreneurship and Institutions

Previous research, notably Baumol (1990), has highlighted the role of insti-tutions in channeling entrepreneurial supply into productive, unproductive or destructive activities. However, entrepreneurship is not only influenced by institutions—entrepreneurs often help shape institutions themselves. The bilateral causal relation between entrepreneurs and institutions is examined in this paper. Entrepreneurs affect institutions in at least three ways. Entrepreneurship abiding by existing institutions is occasionally disruptive enough to challenge the foundations of prevailing institutions. Entrepreneurs sometimes have the opportunity to evade institutions, which tends to undermine the effectiveness of the institutions, or cause institutions to change for the better. Lastly, entrepreneurs can directly alter institutions through innovative political entrepreneurship. As business entrepreneurship, innovative political activity may be productive or unproductive, depending on the incentives facing entrepreneurs.Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Institutions; Regulation; Self-employment

Entrepreneurship and the Theory of Taxation

Taxation theory rarely takes entrepreneurship into consideration. We discuss how this omission affects conclusions derived from standard models of capital taxation when applied to entrepreneurial income. Some of the defining features of entrepreneurship often omitted by standard capital taxation theory are incorporated into the analysis. This includes the lack of a well-functioning external market for entrepreneurial effort, limited access to external capital and the complementarities between entrepreneurial effort, entrepre-neurial innovation and capital investment. Because of these constraints, the entrepreneurial project is tied to the individual owner-manager. Unlike the typical passive portfolio investor assumed in cost of capital models the entrepreneur is unable to decouple savings decisions from investment decisions, and due to the comple-mentarities in production makes a joint decision on the supply of effort and capital. The returns from success-ful entrepreneurial ventures thus cannot be readily divided into labor and capital income, in stark contrast to what is assumed in standard taxation theory. When unique attributes of entrepreneurship are taken into account, some major conclusions of capital taxation models no longer hold, including the neutrality of capital taxation in owner-managed firms. These results are particularly important for the Nordic system of dual taxation, the theoretical foundation of which relies on the ability to neatly separate capital income from the labor income of the self-employed.Capital Income Taxation; Dual Income Taxation; Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Institutions; Labor Supply; New Firm Creation; Optimal Factor Taxes; Taxation; Tax Policy

The International Mobility of the Super-Rich Tino Sanandaji The International Mobility of the Super-Rich

Abstract Relying on Forbes Magazine annual rankings for two decades, 1625 billionaires and their countries of birth and residence are identi…ed, most of whom are self-made entrepreneurs. 13 percent of billionaires reside in a country other than that of their birth. Migration is linked to distance, to cultural ties and to the per capita income of the respective source and host country. Capital taxes have a statistically signi…cant though economically modest e¤ect. 80 percent of those who moved migrated from a lower per capita income to a higher per capita income country and 70 percent from a higher tax country to a lower tax country. Self-made billionaires are more likely to move to countries with larger market sizes. Overall surprisingly few billionaire entrepreneurs migrate. Previous research has found that self-employed tend to work in their home community at higher rates than employees. Entrepreneurship too appears to be local, with private equity be characterized by a home bias. One explanation may be the wide dispersion and local nature of information as emphasized by Hayek. JEL codes. L26, F22, H

Entrepreneurship and the Theory of Taxation

Abstract A review of the literature on firm taxation reveals that the economics of entrepreneurship has not sufficiently been taken into consideration. We discuss how this affects conclusions derived from standar