Working Papers

Entrepreneurial Couples

with Mirjam van Praag and Peter Thompson

We study motivations for and outcomes of couples starting up a joint firm, using a sample of 1,069 Danish couples that established a joint enterprise between 2001 and 2010, while comparing them to a set of comparable firms and couples. The main motivation for joint entrepreneurship is to create a labor market position for (female) spouses with limited alternative opportunities. This decision has positive effects: 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. This also reduces income inequality in the household.

Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings 2015 – DOI – PDF