Job Market Paper 
What Drives Entrepreneurship?
I study the effect of college education, intelligence, and self-confidence on entrepreneurship using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979. Controlling for intelligence and self-confidence I find that college education has no effect on business survival, but increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. Intelligence boosts business survival, even accounting for selection. Moreover smarter individuals are more likely to start incorporated firms but less likely to found unincorporated ones. Self-confidence increases the likelihood of starting a firm and has a weak positive effect on business survival. These results suggest that existing conflicting evidence on this topic is driven by the failure to effectively control for unobserved characteristics.
(PDF)

Secondary Paper
Taxation and the Quality and Quantity of Entrepreneurship (joint with Tino Sanandaji)
We study the effect of taxation on entrepreneurship, taking into account both the amount of entry and the quality of new ventures. We show that even with risk neutral agents and no tax evasion progressive taxes can increase entrepreneurial entry, while reducing average firm quality. So called "success taxes" increase startup of lower value business ideas by reducing the option value of pursuing better projects. This suggests that the most common measure used in the literature, the likelihood of entry into self-employment, may underestimate the adverse effect of taxation.
(Download Article)

Other Working Papers
Does Education of the Entrepreneur Influence Firm Capital Structure? (preliminary)
Using a new dataset of twins I test the Hart and Moore (1994) hypothesis that firms whose value is mostly tied to the entrepreneur's human capital have on average lower debt to equity ratios. Twin methodology allows us to control for unobserved heterogeneity. Preliminary evidence supports Hart and Moore's theory. 

The Return to education for Entrepreneurs and Self-employed (preliminary, joint with Tino Sanandaji)
Entrepreneurs and self-employed are fundamentally different: the former start firms in order to pursue a business idea and innovate; self-employment is often merely an alternative to a salaried job. Using a new dataset of twins we try to measure the return to education for these two categories of business owners.


OLDER PAPERS:

Publications
Protection of Property Rights and Growth as Political Equilibria
Journal of Economic Surveys, Vol. 22, Issue 5, pp. 953-987, December 2008
This paper presents a survey of the literature on property rights and economic growth. After reviewing some empirical evidence linking protection of property rights to economic growth, it discusses different theoretical mechanisms that relate property rights to economic development. Lack of protection of property rights can result in slow economic growth through different channels: expropriation of private wealth, corruption of civil servants, excessive taxation and barriers to adoption of new technologies. The second part focuses on the origins of property rights. Different theories are illustrated but more attention is paid to the social conflict views and its successes and limitations.
(Download Article)

Working Papers
Colonial Heritage and Economic Development
While the importance of institutions for explaining cross-country income differences is widely recognized, comparatively little is known about the origins of economic institutions. One strand of the literature emphasizes cultural differences while another points at exogenous environmental factors such as mortality and climate. Both are supported by some empirical evidence. I reconcile the two schools of institutional origins by proposing a theory of self-selection of colonists to different geographic destinations. Exogenous characteristics such as climate, mortality and factor differences determine which type of settler decides to move to a particular colony. Settler type, in turn, shapes the institutional quality of the new country. The model is used to confirm observed regularities reported by previous researchers. Furthermore, robust new evidence is presented in support of this selection process. The results suggest that any theory of colonial development that does not take selection into account will be incomplete.
(Download Article)