“A Golden Opportunity: The Gold Rush, Entrepreneurship and Culture”, Michael Stuetzer, Abel Brodeur, Martin Obschonka, David B. Audretsch, Jason Rentfrow, Jeff Potter, Samuel Gosling2022-05-19 (economics, personality)⁠:

We study the origins of entrepreneurship (culture) in the United States. For the analysis we make use of a quasi-natural experiment—the gold rush in the second part of the 19^th century.

We argue that the presence of gold attracted individuals with entrepreneurial personality traits. Due to a genetic founder effect and the formation of an entrepreneurship culture, we expect gold rush counties to have higher entrepreneurship rates.

The analysis shows that gold rush counties indeed have higher entrepreneurship rates from 1910, when records began, until the present as well as a higher prevalence of entrepreneurial traits in the populace.

[Keywords: gold rush, entrepreneurship, culture]

See Also:

• Individualistic CEO and Corporate Innovation: Evidence from US Frontier Culture

• Those Who Stayed: Individualism, Self-Selection and Cultural Change during the Age of Mass Migration

• Cultural entrepreneurship: stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources

• Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the United States over Two Centuries