The objective of this study is to determine whether specific industries across countries or within countries are more likely to reach a stage of profitability and make a successful exit. In particular, we assess whether firms in certain industries are more prone to exit via IPO, be acquired, or...

The use of debt to finance risky entrepreneurial-firm projects is rife with informational and contracting problems. Nonetheless, we document widespread lending to startups in three innovation-intensive sectors and in early stages of development. At odds with claims that the secondary patent...

This paper analyzes a comprehensive data set of 160 non venture-backed, 79 venture-backed and 61 bridge financed companies going public at Germany´s Neuer Markt between March 1997 and March 2002. I examine whether these three types of issues differ with regard to issuer characteristics, balance...

Nearly 60\% of the money raised in venture capital financing rounds in the U.S. comes from investors in the top decile by money invested. Despite several advantages that these investors enjoy, they are remarkably less efficient in financing successful ventures, obtaining fewer IPOs and...

We provide evidence on the value of patents to startups by leveraging the quasi-random assignment of applications to examiners with different propensities to grant patents. Using unique data on all first-time applications filed at the U.S. Patent Office since 2001, we find that startups that win...

The aim of this study is to analyze the returns of business angels' investments and their determinants. In this research the author wants to investigate the relationship existing between the performance of business angels investments and a series of explanatory variables widely used in the...

We investigate what determines regions' entrepreneurial behavior and the impact of it on regional economic performance. We argue that economic knowledge differs not only from traditional factors of production due to its public goods characteristic but it is also uncertain. In that perspective,...

Immigrant entrepreneurs are critical to regional and national economies. Immigrants in the USA have higher self-employment rates than natives, and immigrants have made outsized contributions as founders of numerous highly successful firms. However, we document that immigrant self-employment...