External finance is central for nascent entrepreneurs, people in the process of starting new ventures. We argue that nascent entrepreneurs use patents and prototypes in order to signal their ability to appropriate the returns from their innovation as well as the project´s feasibility. Our...

This study is the first to examine the decision to re-enter business ownership by entrepreneurs who have exited their first business using a longitudinal matched employer-employee database. This kind of data allow us to distinguish between those serial entrepreneurs who re-enter business...

This study explores individual and country-level environmental drivers of informal "seed" investment. We examine four types of informal investors based on business ownership experience (or no such experience) and close family relationship with investee (or no such relationship): "classic love...

This paper analyses the association between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth, controlling for measures of firm resources, characteristics of the entrepreneur, and aspects of the environment. The central research question is: How strong is the relationship between dynamic capabilities and...

We investigate regional differences in the contribution of newly founded businesses to regional employment. This is labeled the direct employment effect of new businesses. The analysis is at the spatial level of West German planning regions for the period 1984-2002. We find rather pronounced...

Innovative start-ups are an important driver of economic growth. This article presents empirical evidence on the effects of R&D on new product development, inter-firm alliances and employment growth during the early life course of firms. We use a dataset that contains a sample of new firms that...

Recent empirical research has found that the effect of new business formation on employment emerges over a period of about ten years and has identified a 'wave' pattern of these effects. In this study, we decompose the overall contribution of new business formation on employment change into...

We investigate the effects that new business formation has on employment in incumbent firms and compare it to the development in the start-ups. The analysis is performed for West German regions over the 1984-2002 period. It shows that the employment effects of new businesses on the incumbents...

Based on an improved and extended database, the Establishment History Panel, we extend the analysis of Fritsch & Weyh (2006) by investigating the development of employment in German start-up co-horts for the period 1976 to 2004. We confirm the typical pattern of an initial increasing and then...

We investigate the effects that regional start-up activity has on employment in new and in incumbent businesses. The analysis is performed for West German regions over the 1987-2002 period. It shows that the effects of new businesses on employment in the incumbents are significantly positive and...