Mulling over Massachusetts: Health Insurance Mandates and Entrepreneurs

The author provides preliminary and provocative results regarding the impact of health insurance mandates on the propensity of entrepreneurs to start new organizations. In keeping with a well-observed propensity for individuals to adjust their economic calculations in anticipation of future costs/benefits, the evidence suggests that when confronted with such mandates, potential entrepreneurs may either abandon entrepreneurial ambitions or seek to minimize mandate costs through jurisdictional arbitrage with appreciable implications for state and national level approaches to health care, health insurance provision, and workers.