Managers of private entrepreneurial firms face obstacles in raising capital both in placing a value on a firm and conveying value to investors. These problems are exacerbated when the firm is small, has limited assets (except for human capital) and has yet to have a lead product. In such cases...

We estimate the impact of COVID-19 on business failures for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using firm-level data in seventeen countries. Absent government support, the failure rate of SMEs would have increased by 9.1 percentage points, representing 4.6 percent of private sector...

Today the vast majority of multi-owner firms in the United States are corporations, but that was not the case in the past. Before the advent of the income tax, tort litigation, and significant federal regulation, entrepreneurs more often than not chose to organize as partnerships, a form that...

Considerable evidence suggests that information is acquired more easily within than across firm boundaries. I explore why this is observed in the setting of clinical development. Since the mid-1980s, pharmaceutical firms have partly contracted out the operational aspects of clinical trials to...

We examine how two highly successful new biotechnology firms (NBFs) source their most critical input -- scientific knowledge. We find that scientists at the two NBFs enter into large numbers of collaborative research efforts with scientists at other organizations, especially universities. Formal...

Population ecology models are elegant in form and adequate in describing aggregate data, but poor in telling stories and predicting the location of growth. Fundamentals models emphasizing the variables central to resource mobilization, such as intellectual human capital, can predict where and...

In this paper, we examine the determinants of control rights in technology strategic alliances between biotechnology firms and pharmaceutical corporations, as well as with other biotechnology firms. We undertake three clinical studies and an empirical analysis of 200 contracts. Consistent with...

Using data on over 900 firms for the period 1988-2000, we estimate the effect on phase-specific biotech and pharmaceutical R&D success rates of a firm's overall experience, its experience in the relevant therapeutic category; the diversification of its experience, and alliances with large and...