We examine the performance of startups co-founded by immigrant and native teams. Leveraging unique data linking startups to founders' and employees' employment and education histories, we find native-migrant teams outperform native-only and migrant-only teams. Native-migrant startups have larger...

This paper assesses whether delays in obtaining permanent residency status can explain recent declines in the share of Chinese and Indian PhD graduates from US STEM programs who remain in the US after their studies. We find that newly-binding limits on permanent visas for those from China and...

This paper studies how investing in venture capital (VC) affects the entrepreneurial outcomes of individual limited partners (LPs). Using comprehensive administrative data on entrepreneurial activities and VC fundraising and investments in China, we first document that individual LPs, on...

We analyze determinants of access to venture capital for Black founders of high-growth startups. We combine image- and name-processing algorithms with clerical review to identify race for over 100,000 startup founders "at risk" for venture funding. Black founders raise roughly one-third as much...

From 2010 to 2021, 639 US VC-funded firms achieved unicorn status. We investigate why there are so many unicorns and why controlling shareholders give investors privileges to obtain unicorn status. We show that unicorns rely more than other VC-funded firms on organizational capital as well as...

The provision of venture debt financing to growth-oriented startups which are backed by venture capital (VC) equity has been a bit of a puzzle given the lack of positive cash flows or traditional collateral of such startups. This short paper lays out the hurdles for debt to overcome to be a...

Economic frictions pervade the founding, financing, growing, and exiting of high-growth entrepreneurial firms. This article considers one friction that currently affects a small, but important, set of entrepreneurs: racial and gender discrimination. I first collect facts from a large empirical...

Immigrants contribute disproportionately to entrepreneurship in many countries, accounting for a quarter of new employer businesses in the US. We review recent research on the measurement of immigrant entrepreneurship, the traits of immigrant founders, their economic impact, and policy levers....

Early-stage firms utilize venture debt in one-third of financing rounds despite their general lack of cash flow and collateral. In our model, we show how venture debt aligns incentives within a firm. We derive a novel theoretical channel in which runway extension through debt increases firm...

We study the relationship between firm centralization and organizational reproduction in satellite locations. For decentralized firms, the ethnic compositions of inventors in satellite locations mostly resemble their host cities, with little link to the inventor composition of their parent...