Thesis title: Smart and Illicit: Who Becomes an Entrepreneur and Do They Earn More? (RossLevine andYonaRubinstein,The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2017), 963-1018)

Time: Friday, March 1, 2019 12:00-13:30

Location: Room 610, Mingde Main Building

Speaker: Hailun Wei, PhD student of Renmin University of China, 2018

Abstract: We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between “entrepreneurs” and other business owners. We show that the incorporated self-employed and their businesses engage in activities that demand comparatively strong nonroutine cognitive abilities, while the unincorporated and their firms perform tasks demanding relatively strong manual skills. People who become incorporated business owners tend to be more educated and—as teenagers—score higher on learning aptitude tests, exhibit greater self-esteem, and engage in more illicit activities than others. The combination of “smart” and “illicit” tendencies as youths accounts for both entry into entrepreneurship and the comparative earnings of entrepreneurs. Individuals tend to experience a material increase in earnings when becoming entrepreneurs, and this increase occurs at each decile of the distribution.

Moderator: Associate Professor Liu Xiaolu

The Finance Literature Seminar is sponsored by the Department of Finance, School of Finance and Finance, Renmin University of China. The graduate students of the Department of Finance analyze the classic or frontier literature of finance, and form theoretical thoughts and systematic views on hot issues in the field of finance. The main topics of the seminar include: government behavior, fiscal system, tax system and macro economy.