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When Do Employees Leave Their Job for Entrepreneurship? *
Author(s) -
Hyytinen Ari,
Maliranta Mika
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.725
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1467-9442
pISSN - 0347-0520
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9442.2008.00522.x
Subject(s) - entrepreneurship , productivity , business , labour economics , spawn (biology) , demographic economics , economics , finance , economic growth , fishery , biology
Existing firms are argued to be an important source of new entrepreneurs. Yet, relatively little is known about the characteristics of firms that breed new entrepreneurs. We use a large linked employee–employer dataset to trace and characterize the types of firms which generate new entrepreneurs in Finland. We find that such transitions are rare and that smaller firms spawn new entrepreneurs more frequently than larger firms. We also find that firms' R&D intensity and, to a lesser extent, their productivity are negatively related to the probability that employees transit into entrepreneurship. These results are robust to controlling for a number of employee and employer attributes.