We study what type of entrepreneurs are affected by financial constraints. Our identification strategy exploits age-based discontinuities in the amount of funding available through a public program for unemployed workers. We find that access to funding increases the rate of entrepreneurship. The...

This paper estimates the causal impact of dismissal costs on capital deepening and productivity exploiting a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees, leaving firing costs unchanged for larger firms. We show that the increase in firing costs induces an...

This paper estimates the causal impact of dismissal costs on capital deepening and productivity exploiting a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees, leaving ring costs unchanged for larger firms. We show that the increase in firing costs induces an...

Employment protection may affect both productivity and capital investment because higher adjustments costs hamper allocative efficiency and may therefore affect both the optimal capital labor input mix and total factor productivity. To estimate the impact of dismissal costs on capital deepening...

We study what type of entrepreneurs are affected by financial constraints by exploiting age-based discontinuities in the amount of funding available through a public program for unemployed workers. Our sample links administrative data on 2.1 million eligible workers to the firms they create,...

In this paper, we examine which dimensions of cognitive ability are most predictive of key financial outcomes and what pathways could account for the observed relationships. We begin by proposing a conceptual framework that accounts for several plausible "channels" through which dif- ferences in...