"Using a comprehensive linked employer-employee database from Brazil for the period 1995-2001, we are able for the first time to compare firms founded as employee spinoffs to new firms without parents and to diversification ventures of existing firms entering a new industry. Employee spinoffs...

One of the leading theories of entrepreneurship is that less risk averse individuals become entrepreneurs and more risk averse individuals become their employees. Kihlstrom and Laffont (1979) formalized this insight in an elegant and widely taught general equilibrium model. However, their model...

We investigate entry in a dynastic entrepreneurship (overlapping generations) environment created by employee spinoffs. Without finance constraints, enforcement of non-compete agreements unambiguously improves social welfare outcomes, and even increases the rate of spinoffs from original firms....