Our analysis of the survival of firms leads to the important result that the hypotheses about differences between various industries in the life duration of new firms and about the importance of the region of location for the probability of survival are confirmed. Many more enterprises are...

We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly...

Creative industries comprise enterprises focusing on the creation, production, and distribution of creative or cultural goods and services. Following an explorative empirical approach, we analyze start-ups in creative industries regarding three issues along the startup process: (1) personal...

The economic expansion of the late 1990s created many opportunities for business creation in Silicon Valley, but the opportunity cost of starting a business was also high during this period because of the exceptionally tight labor market. A new measure of entrepreneurship derived from matching...

The founder (team)'s human capital is a vital determinant of future firm performance. This is a stylized fact. Less is known about the effect of the human capital of the initial workforce hired by the founder(s). We study the performance consequences of a founder's choice of the initial...

We document three new facts about entrepreneurship. First, a majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers' industry of employment. Second, this tendency is correlated with intelligence: higher-IQ entrepreneurs are less likely to follow...

We study the self-employed decision and its relation to human and social capital. Human capital is necessary to acquire skills. Social capital dampens the effects of uncertainty about future income. Our data set consists of 1339 respondents from the same age group, who were interviewed three...

We extend Lazear's theory of skills variety and entrepreneurship in three directions. First, we provide a theoretical framework linking new business creation with an entrepreneur's skill variety. Second, in this model we allow for both generalists and specialists to possess skill variety. Third,...

Firm ownership is a dening feature of immigrant adaptation: 41% of immigrants own a firm at some point in their first 10 years post-arrival. We use Canadian data linking immigrant arrival records with individual and firm tax data to examine the process of entering firm ownership for immigrants....

Human resources can provide a competitive advantage to firms, but we still know little about how newly-founded ventures start mobilizing these resources. Given the central role of entrepreneurs' background in designing the strategy of new firms, we investigate whether and how startup experience,...