Inara S. Tareque

I am a 5th-year Ph.D. candidate in Management at Columbia Business School. I will be on the 2026-2027 academic job market.

Sitting at the intersection of social capital theory and entrepreneurship, my research examines when and how social capital inhibits versus stimulates entrepreneurship. To answer this question, I study contexts whose distinct institutional and social conditions help reveal novel mechanisms through which social networks shape entrepreneurial action. 

I do this by partnering with organizations that work directly with the populations embedded in these contexts, including the New York State Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Immigrants Rising, and Tract Advisors (a CDFI-support organization). These collaborations allow me to access administrative records and complement them with in-depth interviews, informing my theorizing through the distinct lived experiences of the communities these institutions support.

In my job market paper, I reveal how social capital may pull people away from entrepreneurship. A central tenet in entrepreneurship research holds that financial and social capital complement one another in promoting entrepreneurial entry. Yet social capital also provides access to wage employment opportunities, which may redirect individuals away from entrepreneurship. I show that in contexts where people pursue entrepreneurship out of necessity, because of constrained labor market conditions, this complementarity does not hold. Social capital instead plays an occupational expansion role: by widening the set of feasible occupational choices, it lowers the risk of investing in wage work relative to entrepreneurship, thereby encouraging more individuals to invest their financial resources into wage employment instead of entrepreneurship.

I hold an M.Phil. from Columbia Business School and a BA from Grinnell College, with majors in Mathematics and Economics and a minor in Global Development Studies. 

You can find my CV here, more information about my research here, and teaching here.