Human capital

Using longitudinal data from Growing America Through Entrepreneurship (GATE), I examine whether mentors improve nascent entrepreneurs’ new venture survival and growth. To perform the analysis, I develop a multi-level regression model with mentoring as the key independent variable and human capital as the moderator. The findings provide empirical evidence that having a mentor helps nascent entrepreneurs grow and improve their businesses’ chances of survival. Furthermore, mentorship helps new venture growth and survival for some entrepreneurs more than others. For survival, mentorship is more helpful for those without business education. For new venture growth, I find that mentorship helps those with no prior managerial experience. These results highlight the importance of mentoring for nascent entrepreneurs and the boundary conditions through which mentoring is most beneficial.

This study tests a model that draws on human capital theory to explain how individual characteristics of founding entrepreneurs influence performance of their new businesses. Using data from Project GATE (Growing America Through Entrepreneurship), this research study assesses the direct effect of gender on new venture performance and the moderating role of gender on the relationship between general and specific human capital and new venture performance.

Using both exogenous and endogenous theory, this paper develops a synthesized model treating human capital as an endogenous contributor to long run economic growth. Human capital is assumed to be the basis of such growth, therefore, the focus is not on technological change per se. Through empirical analysis, human capital is measured by knowledge, and that the accumulation of knowledge, or specialization, is determined through an incentive system. The incentive system, in turn, is determined by the difference in wages paid to certain types of knowledge, those being a general level and a specialized level of knowledge. It is assumed that the learning process can take place at any time, therefore, the specialization process is not limited to an academic environment. A spillover effect associated with specialized knowledge provides for increasing returns to scale in the model, which is also supported by empirical data.