A family embeddedness view on entrepreneurship education and venture creation: evidence from a longitudinal study

Literature offers mixed and apparently contradicting results about the results of entrepreneurship education (EE) courses, offered at universities with the aim of equipping individuals with entrepreneurial skills and preparing them to engage into entrepreneurial activities. Our study takes advantage of a quasi-experimental research on a sample of 446 university students to show that both elective and compulsory EE contribute to students’ entrepreneurial skills and that their impact is contingent to several dimensions students’ exposure to family business. Additionally, we find that none of EE type is per se sufficient to induce students to engage in actual entrepreneurial behavior.