We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks ? where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions ? give larger loans to small firms and those with "soft information". However,...

We study how a mortgage reform that exogenously increased access to credit had an impact on entrepreneurship, using individual-level micro data from Denmark. The reform allows us to disentangle the role of credit access from wealth effects that typically confound analyses of the collateral...

We examine the extent to which financial market development impacts the diffusion of 16 major technologies, looking across 55 countries, from 1870 to 2000. We find that greater depth in financial markets leads to faster technology diffusion for more capital-intensive technologies, but only in...

This paper examines the extent to which the positive relationship between personal wealth and entry into entrepreneurship is due to financing constraints. I exploit a tax reform and use unique micro-data from Denmark to study how exogenous changes in the cost of external finance shape both the...

We examine the effect of US branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms using micro-data from the US Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least four years, a greater...

We find that VC-backed firms receiving their initial investment in hot markets are more likely to go bankrupt, but conditional on going public are valued higher on the day of their IPO, have more patents and have more citations to their patents. Our results suggest that VCs invest in riskier and...

We provide a model of investment into new ventures that demonstrates why some places, times and industries should be associated with a greater degree of experimentation by investors. Investors respond to financing risk ? a forecast of limited future funding ? by modifying their focus to finance...

Abstract is not available at this time

We examine how investors' tolerance for failure impacts the types of projects they are willing to fund. We show that actions that reduce short term accountability and thus encourage agents to experiment more simultaneously reduce the level of experimentation financial backers are willing to...

We examine the extent to which venture capital is adequately positioned for the rapid commercialization of clean energy technologies in the United States. While there are several startups in clean energy that are well-suited to the traditional venture capital investment model, our analysis...