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Serial Entrepreneurship: Rethinking Top Wealth Dynamics

Authors: Alexandre Gaillard; Sumudu Kankanamge; Ozgur Karabulut;

Serial Entrepreneurship: Rethinking Top Wealth Dynamics

Abstract

This paper uncovers novel facts about serial entrepreneurship at the top of the wealth distribution. While business ownership is prevalent among the richest households, top business wealth is not simply built by scaling a single large firm. In the SCF, business-owning households in the top 0.1 percent own about seven private businesses on average, while Forbes-listed individuals own around ten. These portfolios are active and dynamic. Entrepreneurs enter new ventures, scale some of them, close or sell others, and reallocate capital across them. Private equity returns fall sharply with wealth for single-firm owners, but much less for entrepreneurs with multiple firms. We develop a tractable general equilibrium theory in which entrepreneurs operate multiple firms subject to decreasing returns and search for high-yield opportunities. The model matches the concentration of multi-firm entrepreneurs at the top, the flows into and out of multi-firm ownership, and the flatter returnwealth profile among rich households. Wealth taxation has ambiguous effects. It improves selection toward high-return entrepreneurs, but weakens experimentation at the top.

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
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