We examine the role of human capital in employees' decisions to leave their parent firms and form spinouts. Using a large sample of individuals who formed spinouts in manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2005, and their co-workers who did not, we find that after controlling for age,...

We examine the impact of enforcing non-compete covenants (CNC) on the formation and performance of new firms using matched employer-employee data on 30 US states. To identify the impact of CNC, we exploit the inter-state variation in CNC enforcement along with the fact that courts do not enforce...