I confirm the finding that the propensity to start a new firm rises sharply among those in the top five percentiles of personal wealth. This pattern is more pronounced for entrants in less capital intensive sectors. Prior to entry, founders in this group earn about 6% less compared to those who...

In fields as diverse as technology entrepreneurship and the arts, crowds of interested stakeholders are increasingly responsible for deciding which innovations to fund, a privilege that was previously reserved for a few experts, such as venture capitalists and grant?making bodies. Little is...

We review the recent literature on the financing of innovation, inclusive of large companies and new startups. This research strand has been very active over the past five years, generating important new findings, questioning some long-held beliefs, and creating its own puzzles. Our review...

We examine the extent to which financial market development impacts the diffusion of 16 major technologies, looking across 55 countries, from 1870 to 2000. We find that greater depth in financial markets leads to faster technology diffusion for more capital-intensive technologies, but only in...

We study how a mortgage reform that exogenously increased access to credit had an impact on entrepreneurship, using individual-level micro data from Denmark. The reform allows us to disentangle the role of credit access from wealth effects that typically confound analyses of the collateral...

We examine the effect of U.S. branch banking deregulations on the entry size of new firms, using micro-data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We find that the average entry size for startups did not change following the deregulations. However, among firms that survived at least four years, a greater...