2005-2017: 6% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats became entrepreneurs; Republicans increase their relative entrepreneurship during Republican administrations and decrease it during Democratic administrations

Partisan Entrepreneurship. Joseph Engelberg, Jorge Guzman, Runjing Lu & William Mullins. NBER Working Paper 30249.DOI 10.3386/w30249. July 2022. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30249

Abstract: Republicans start more firms than Democrats. In a sample of 40 million party-identified Americans between 2005 and 2017, we find that 6% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats become entrepreneurs. This partisan entrepreneurship gap is time-varying: Republicans increase their relative entrepreneurship during Republican administrations and decrease it during Democratic administrations, amounting to a partisan reallocation of 170,000 new firms over our 13-year sample. We find sharp changes in partisan entrepreneurship around the elections of President Obama and President Trump, and the strongest effects among the most politically active partisans: those that donate and vote.