The relationship between credit constraints and household entrepreneurship in China

Abstract This paper evaluates the impact of credit constraint on entrepreneurship by utilizing 2011 China Household Finance and Survey micro-data. We measure household credit constraint directly and use the LPM model to estimate the impact of credit constraint on entrepreneurship. We employ predetermined credit constraint, quasi-experiment, and instrumental variable to eliminate the possible endogeneity problem. Empirical estimates show that credit constraint significantly decreases the probabilities of households to start businesses by around 3 percentage points in general. Further analysis shows that credit constraint significantly decreases the propensity of households to entry into enterprise operation, while it has no significant impact on small handicraft operation.