Determinants of entrepreneurial intentions: Mexican immigrants in Chicago

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Abstract

This paper focuses on Mexican immigrants who are considering to start a business but do not so for various reasons (latent entrepreneurs). The research design is unusual in that it queries the individuals at the very preliminary stages of the process when they are contemplating the alternatives, so it is well suited to learn about the determinants of business ownership. First, the findings demonstrate the potential value of personality measures (e.g., risk disposition) for predicting who will want to start a business. Second, the results underscore that having close family members in business exposes individuals to role models and sources of financial and nonfinancial help that might put business ownership within reach of people with modest resources. Third, economic resources in the household, in the form of financial investments, also affect the wish to start a business because they furnish available capital for the start-up.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)393-411
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Socio-Economics
Volume30
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2001

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by core grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to the Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago (Marta Tienda, Richard Taub and Robert Townsend, Principal Investigators). I am grateful to Moshe Semyonov and Gustavo Mesch for insightful comments and to the University of Haifa for institutional support

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics and Econometrics

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