House Prices, Home Equity and Entrepreneurships
44 Pages Posted: 19 Jun 2013
Date Written: May 2, 2013
Abstract
How does home ownership affect new business creation? We develop a model of career choice in the presence of liquidity constraints in which shocks to the value of real estate affect the propensity of potential entrepreneurs to borrow against the value of their property. Using a large US individual-level survey data set over the 1996-2006 period, we show that a 10% increase in home equity raises the probability of transition into entrepreneurship by up to 14%. Our results persist when we use the topological elasticity of housing supply to generate variation in home equity that is orthogonal to entrepreneurial choice.
Keywords: Home ownership, collateral channel, entrepreneurship
JEL Classification: G21, L26
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation