How are entrepreneurial choices influenced by households’ child-rearing opportunities? Empirical analysis of the introduction of China’s nationwide two-child policy using a difference-in-differences approach reveals an increased likelihood of having a child and a decreased likelihood of entrepreneurial participation in households with a married woman between 20 and 40 years old. This tradeoff can be attributed to family risk considerations: households experiencing a recent childbirth exhibit lower appetite for risk, and households lacking intra-household risk-sharing or facing higher uncertainty about career prospects react more strongly to the policy change. More importantly, we find that the policy effect is stronger in families whose first child is a daughter due to son preference. Our empirical evidence highlights that pro-natalist demographic policies can give rise to unintended consequences that discourage or deter entrepreneurship.

Speaker:

Po-Hsuan Hsu holds the National Chair Professor, Tsing Hua Chair Professor, and NTHU Ching-Jing Distinguished Talent Chair, College of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University. Prior to returning to Taiwan, he was an assistant professor of finance at University of Connecticut, and a professor at the University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University in 2007.His research focuses on innovation economics and financial markets, but he also touches on sustainability and financial econometrics. He has published in prestigious journals across different fields including Economics, Finance, Technology Management, Accounting, Information System, etc. His paper has appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, RAND Journal of Economics, Management Science, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Research Policy, Contemporary Accounting Research, etc. He is serving as Associate Editor for various journals, such as Management Science (Entrepreneurship and Innovation Department, Finance Department), Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Research Policy. He is currently a Senior Fellow of Mack Institute for Innovation Management of The Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, a Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER), and a TPRI Fellow of Technology & Policy Research Initiative (TPRI) of Boston University. He is also active in organizing and hosting in-person and online seminars and international conferences in innovation economics and sustainable finance, including the AIEA-NBER conference, Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference (formerly known as Darden-Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference), Taiwan Symposium on Innovation Economics and Entrepreneurship (37 events by May 2025), and NTHU-UNSW-SMU Symposium on Sustainable Finance and Economics (10 events by May 2025). His papers won the best paper awards in various international and Asian conferences and have been covered in media for many times.