Abstract How large is entrepreneurs’ personal importance to startups? We use the death of nearly 1,500 entrepreneurs as a source exogenous variation, and find sustained negative effects on growth profitability. For small startups, go mainly via firm survival, while for larger startups are growth. mean effect sales about 60%. The appear be driven by entrepreneur specialness rather than leadershi...

Business cycles appear to be large, persistent, and asymmetric relative to the shocks hitting the economy. This observation suggests the existence of an asymmetric amplification and propagation mechanism, which transforms the shocks into the observed movements in aggregate output. This article demonstrates, in a small open economy, how credit constraints can be such a mechanism. The article als...

One important role of corporate governance is to ensure that real options are exercised in the interest of the shareholders. This paper explores whether and how this can be achieved in start-up firms by the venture capitalist retaining a post-IPO equity stake. Our setting is a firm whose future prospects are uncertain and strategic choices remain to be made. The payoff to entrepreneur and share...