主讲题目：Economic Inequality and Entrepreneurship: Micro Evidence from China

主讲人：周广肃博士，南开大学经济学院

时间：12月21日（星期四）14:30-16:30

地点：启真大厦1213多媒体教室

主持人：陈帅 研究员，浙江大学百人计划学者

主讲人简介：周广肃，经济学博士，现任教于南开大学经济学院，2015年博士毕业于北京大学国家发展研究院，2012年在美国兰德公司任访问学者。周广肃老师长期致力于应用经济学领域的研究，重点关注收入不平等、社会流动性、家庭经济决策等研究议题。他曾在Journal of Population Economics、Review of Economics of the Household、《经济研究》、《管理世界》、《世界经济》、《经济学》（季刊）等中英文期刊上发表学术论文20余篇，主持国家自然科学基金、天津市社科规划项目、中央高校基本科研业务费项目等多项研究课题，出版独著1部。他的研究曾获得刘诗白经济学奖、《经济学》（季刊）最佳论文奖、全国优秀财政理论研究成果二等奖。

讲座论文摘要：This article develops a multi-level theoretical explanation on why economic inequality may affect individuals’ decision to engage in entrepreneurship activities. We use a sample of 4,992 Chinese households in 2010 and 2012, merged with county-level variables, to test our hypotheses. We adopt the 2010 census’s demographic structure as the instrumental variable to address the potential endogeneity of inequality measures. We also show that our results remain consistent across various robustness checks. Apart from a positive impact on entrepreneurship, we further find that the effect of inequality on entrepreneurship is stronger for people in the middle economic status than for those in the top or the bottom groups. By exploring the mechanism, we find that material aspiration plays an important role in the impacts of economics inequality on entrepreneurship. Our research and findings may have important policy implications for regulating income distribution and promoting entrepreneurship.