MACRO: Professor Mi Luo (Peking University)

Why the Wealthy Work: Entrepreneurship, Scale, and Owner Time

Across U.S. households, hours worked rise with wealth, contradicting the standard income effect by which the rich should work less. We trace this puzzle to the production side and show that it is concentrated among entrepreneurs, whose hours climb steeply with wealth while workers’ hours stay flat. Drawing on data with rich information on entrepreneurs, we establish that the owner’s own time is a productive input in its own right, raising firm scale independently of capital, and that returns to scale rise with firm scale. We build and estimate an occupational-choice model in which the owner’s time is productive and capital is collateral-constrained. Wealth loosens the constraint and makes the owner’s time more valuable. The estimated model matches the upward entrepreneurial hours–wealth gradient alongside a flat worker profile. The financial friction thus shapes hours on both sides of the labor market.