Platform intermediation of goods and services has considerably transformed the U.S. economy. We use administrative data on U.S. tax returns to study the role of the gig economy on entrepreneurship. We find that gig workers are more likely to become entrepreneurs, particularly those who are lower income, younger, and benefit from flexibility. We track all newly created firms and show that gig workers start firms in similar industries as their gig experience, which are less likely to survive and demonstrate higher performance. Overall, our findings suggest on-the-job learning promotes entrepreneurial entry and shifts the types of firms started by entrepreneurs.

We study the corporate-loan pricing decisions of a major, systemic bank during the Greek financial crisis. A unique aspect of our data set is that we observe both the actual interest rate and the “break-even rate” (BE rate) of each loan, as computed by the bank’s own loan-pricing department (in effect, the loan’s marginal cost). We document that low-BE-rate (safer) borrowers are charged significant markups, whereas high-BE-rate (riskier) borrowers are charged smaller and even negative markups. We rationalize this de facto cross-subsidization through the lens of a dynamic model featuring depressed collateral values, impaired capital-market access, and limit pricing.