We examine whether and how investors' reliance on financial information is affected by the rate of sales growth of a start-up venture. We find that investors discern between firms by the extent to which their products are adopted by the market. For firms that failed to increase their sales since...

If control of their firms allows entrepreneurs to derive private benefits, it also allows other controlling parties. Private benefits are especially relevant for venture capitalists, who typically get considerable control in their portfolio firms, but not for banks, which are passive loan...

This paper investigates the influence of social capital on young firms' financing arrangements. Using a sample of U.S. start-ups, I find that social capital, as captured by secular norms and social networks in the entrepreneur's county, increases access to outside financing and reduces reliance...

New firms are regarded to be of substantial importance for the development of an economy, especially for innovation, growth, and the creation of jobs. However, new firms also face a high risk of failure. Thus, there seem to be high try-out costs connected with the establishment of firms. In...

Empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs make mistakes: too many enter markets and, once there, persist too long. While scholars have largely settled on behavioral bias as the cause, we suggest that this consensus is premature. These mistakes may also arise from a process in which...

We present a theory of entrepreneurial behavior that explores the relationship between overconfidence and successful firm outcomes, such as acquisition or IPO. In our model, increasing overconfidence produces two conflicting effects on the probability of a successful outcome: it not only induces...

Existing management research has so far dealt with the consequences of labor turnover for established firms, but has not addressed its effect on young entrepreneurial businesses. In this paper I assess, both theoretically and empirically, the productivity effects of worker replacement in young...

There are two ways for a venture capital (VC) firm to enter a new market: initiate a new deal or form a syndicate with an incumbent. Both types of entry are extensively observed in the data. In this paper, I examine (i) the causes of syndication between entrant and incumbent VC firms, (ii) the...

By constructing a novel dataset based on the Nielsen Retail Scanner and the VentureXpert databases, we study how venture capitalists (VCs) create value in the product market for the entrepreneurial firms backed by them. We document that, compared to that of non-VC-backed firms, the sales of...

A stylized fact of economic development is the structural transformation of countries from traditional, mainly agricultural societies to modern economies dominated by manufacturing and services. In this paper we provide an endogenous growth model to illuminate the role of entrepreneurial...