Occupational choice and social contacts across regions

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Jena Economic Research Papers ; No. 2008,079

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
• Subject: Occupational choice ; entrepreneurship ; social contacts ; Berufswahl ; Unternehmer ; Selbstständige ; Soziale Beziehungen ; Soziales Netzwerk ; Stadtgröße ; Deutschland

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bauernschuster, Stefan ; Falck, Oliver ; Heblich, Stephan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics
• (where): Jena
• (when): 2008

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/31741
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET