While the concept has been around for years, recently the policy notion of a “guaranteed basic income” (GBI)—or universal basic income—has had a resurgence of interest. In addition to rationales that relate to fairness and response to structural employment shifts due to automation and globalization, another motivation that is sometimes put forward for these plans is to encourage risk-taking by providing a safety net: There would be greater entrepreneurial activity if an unsuccessful entrepreneur had the GBI to fall back on. In this paper we investigate a rare long-standing example similar to a GBI in the US: the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend program. This was not put forth as a GBI, and the annual amount is too small to allow an individual to rely fully on these funds; but for a moderate-to-large family the APF can replace a large share of a poverty-level income. Receipt of the APF also does not preclude a family from receiving other safety net benefits—food stamps, unemployment compensation—which suggests that the downside risk for a potential entrepreneur may be lower than in other US states. We initially examine trends in small-firm births in Alaska over time from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics 1977–2014—before and after the institution of the APF program (the first payment was in 1982)—relative to other US states to investigate a possible impact on entrepreneurship; the results suggest a positive effect—which appears to dissipate over time. We then turn to micro data from the Current Population Survey to examine changes in self-employment behavior in Alaska, with somewhat similar findings.

中文翻译：

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有保证的基本收入会鼓励创业吗？来自阿拉斯加的证据

尽管这个概念已经存在多年了，但最近“保证基本收入”（GBI）或通用基本收入的政策概念已重新引起人们的兴趣。除了涉及公平和对由于自动化和全球化而导致的结构性就业变化的反应的基本原理外，有时为这些计划提出的另一动机是通过提供安全网来鼓励冒险活动：失败的企业家不得不依靠GBI。在本文中，我们研究了一个罕见的长期存在的例子，类似于美国的GBI：阿拉斯加永久性基金股息计划。这并不是作为GBI提出的，而且每年的数额太小，以至于个人无法完全依靠这些资金。但是对于中等规模的家庭来说，APF可以替代大部分贫困水平的收入。收到APF的收入也不会阻止家庭获得其他安全网福利（食物券，失业补偿），这表明潜在企业家的下行风险可能会比美国其他州低。我们最初根据人口普查局1977-2014年的业务动态统计数据（在实施APF计划前后（第一次付款是1982年））相对于美国其他州调查了阿拉斯加小企业出生随时间的变化趋势。对创业的可能影响；结果表明产生了积极的效果-随着时间的流逝，效果逐渐消失。然后，我们使用当前人口调查的微观数据来考察阿拉斯加自雇行为的变化，得出的结果有些相似。