Globalization has increased trading activity among countries. In this article, we examine how foreign competition and human capital influence entrepreneurial activity in the host country over time. We propose that foreign competition fosters knowledge spillovers and consequently leads to new firm entry. We build on the competence based argument to suggest that these spillovers are strengthened ...

One in four U.S. high-tech firms are led by CEOs with hands-on innovation experience as inventors. We show that these “Inventor CEOs” stimulate higher quality firm-level innovation, especially when they have a personal history of high-impact patents. A CEO’s technology-class specific inventor experience also predicts the technology classes in which a firm has its greatest innovation success. Ut...

This paper uses an institutional approach to investigate the relationship between the regional institutional environment and regional new firm formation. The importance of perceived attitudes regarding private enterprises, local taxes, political majority, the size of the government sector and perceived rules and bureaucracy on new firm formation in 286 Swedish municipalities are investigated. T...

Using loan-level data from Mexico, we study the relationship between the organizational structure of banks and the terms of lending to small businesses. We find that banks with decentralized lending structures – where branch managers have autonomy over the terms of lending – give larger loans to small firms and those with more "soft information". However, decentralized banks are also more respo...

In recent years, the economics of migration literature has shown a substantial growth in papers exploring host country impacts beyond the labour market. Specifically, researchers have begun to shift their attention from labour market and fiscal changes, towards exploring what we might call ‘the wider effects of migration’ on the production and consumption sides of the economy – and the role of ...

Drawing on representative household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the role of an early precursor of entrepreneurial development – parental role models – for the individual decision to become self-employed in the post-unified Germany. The findings suggest that the socialist regime significantly damaged this mechanism of an intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial...

We explore how slack time might drive the quantity and quality of creative projects. We model slack time as continguous blocks of low opportunity cost time. We model contiguous blocks of time as particularly useful for complex projects. The model predicts that more creative projects are produced during slack time because it is low opportunity cost time. The model also predicts that slack time g...

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effect of new business formation on regional development. After a brief sketch of the origins of research on this issue, the main results of different lines of inquiry are discussed. Main issues are the development of start-up cohorts, the relative magnitude of direct and indirect effects, and results by type of entry and by industry, ...

This paper presents an empirical examination of which start-up signals will small investors to commit financial resources in an equity crowdfunding context. We examine the impact of firms’ financial roadmaps (e.g., preplanned exit strategies such as IPOs or acquisitions), external certification (awards, government grants and patents), internal governance (such as board structure), and risk fact...

Field Editor: N. Coviello Contributing to the literature on local bias and financial networks, we examine how direct and indirect network ties of financial intermediaries mitigate the effects of distance and preference for local investments. In our analysis of cross-border venture capital exits, we find that proximity within networks facilitates cross-border transactions, which suggests that ne...