Human Capital and Entrepreneurship
利用1999年中国高等教育扩招作为外生冲击，通过双重差分估计发现人力资本显著促进创业，并基于1952年大学搬迁和1977年高考恢复两个自然实验提供支持性证据。
This study investigates the causal effect of human capital on entrepreneurship. We use China’s higher-education expansion in 1999 as an exogenous shock to conduct difference-in-differences estimation and find that human capital enhances entrepreneurship significantly. Our results are robust to different specifications and measures. We provide supportive evidence based on two alternative natural experiments: China’s university relocation (1952) and the restart of the college entrance exam (1977). Plausible mechanisms that drive our results are resource acquisition, opportunity identification, and decrease in labor cost. We also find that institutional quality, trust, and financing conditions significantly strengthen our findings.