THE AMERICAN DREAM, MELTING POT AND REGIONAL KNOWLEDGE STOCK AS DRIVERS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY

摘要

We explore whether the generally construed positive effects of intergenerational upward mobility and racial desegregation, under increasing local knowledge stocks, are positively associated with regional entrepreneurial activity. We find the opposite association in a sample of 2,717 US counties. Our results imply that, when county-level knowledge stocks are high, the American Dream (of greater intergenerational upward mobility) and the American Melting Pot (of lower racial segregation) appear, at a minimum, to be not associated with greater entrepreneurial activity. The results are robust to a variety of alternate specifications. For example, when Metropolitan Statistical Area data are used in lieu of county-level data, the results are broadly consistent with those in the main results.