Entrepreneurial Couples

Arbeitspapier

We study possible motivations for co-entrepreneurial couples to start up a joint firm, using a sample of 1,069 Danish couples that established a joint enterprise between 2001 and 2010. We compare their pre-entry characteristics, firm performance and post-dissolution private and financial outcomes with a selected set of comparable firms and couples. We find evidence that couples often establish a business together because one spouse – most commonly the female – has limited outside opportunities in the labor market. However, the financial benefits for each of the spouses, and especially the female, are larger in co-entrepreneurial firms, both during the life of the business and post-dissolution. The start-up of co-entrepreneurial firms seems therefore a sound in-vestment in the human capital of both spouses as well as in the reduction of income inequality in the household. We find no evidence of non-pecuniary benefits or costs of co-entrepreneurship.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 8186

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse ; Entrepreneurship
• Subject: entrepreneurship ; motives ; performance ; couples ; co-entrepreneurship

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dahl, Michael S. ; van Praag, Mirjam ; Thompson, Peter
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/99008
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET