Entrepreneurial returns to college

Edwin Leuven and Ingrid Semb

How does college education shape entrepreneurship? We first document striking differences between college fields in the share of students becoming entrepreneurs. We then leverage quasi-random variation in college admissions near GPA-based thresholds to study the causal impact of the college environment on subsequent entrepreneurship. Exposure to more entrepreneurially intensive college programs, measured as a higher share of entrepreneurs among alumni, substantially increases the probability that a student starts their own business.

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