Theses Doctoral

Essays on Social Class Origins in Entrepreneurship

Oh, Jean Joohyun

Entrepreneurship is often touted as a key avenue for upward mobility. However, it is also a context that highlights the profound impact of underlying privileges, such as family wealth and social capital associated with higher social class origins. This dissertation consists of three empirical essays studying the impact of social class origins on entrepreneurial entry and outcomes.

Chapter 1 documents the magnitude of the social class advantage in being an entrepreneur and investigates mechanisms in terms of human, cultural, and entrepreneurial capital. Chapter 2 examines how investors’ interest in a startup varies by the social class origins of the founder and the investor themselves, using a lab-in-the-field experiment on angel and venture capital investors. Chapter 3 studies the venture capital funding gap between founders from privileged backgrounds and others, using large-scale observational data on startup founders "at risk" for venture funding.

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More About This Work

Academic Units
Business
Thesis Advisors
Guzman, Jorge A.
Phillips, Damon J.
Degree
Ph.D., Columbia University
Published Here
May 8, 2024