What Distinguishes a Serial Entrepreneur?

Abstract

We analyze serial entrepreneurship using a unique crosssectional survey of employees that is for this study linked with longitudinal, register-based employer-employee data. Serial entrepreneurship accounts for nearly 30% of the transitions from paid employment into entrepreneurship. What make an entrepreneur serial are her aspirations and her ability to go ahead and live by them. Specifically, we document that having worked in the past as an entrepreneur increases both the probability that a person presently in paid employment aspires to again become an entrepreneur and, holding the aspirations constant, the probability of her again becoming an entrepreneur. We also find that an employee with entrepreneurial aspirations is more likely to become an entrepreneur subsequently, than an employee without such aspirations. Finally, holding aspirations constant, working in the public sector and being a union member are inversely related to the likelihood of transiting into entrepreneurship.

Keywords: self-employment, aspirations, serial entrepreneurship, employer-employee data

JEL Classification: J23, J64, L20