Evaluating the market for potential entrepreneurs, we test whether interacting with confident agents encourages entry into competitive environments. Under an experimental setting, we find that young managers confident in their entrepreneurial potential, despite no prior experience, increase the...

Do social networks help or hinder firms recruiting talented managers? In our setting, firms are randomly connected to prospective young managers through former employees. Under a discrete-choice model, we find networks increase the likelihood firms hire high-ability managers, while having no...

Conventional wisdom suggests labor market declines drive workers towards temporary entrepreneurship and self-employment, lowering the quality of startups. Analyzing the employment histories of 640,000 workers, we document graduating college during a period of high unemployment does increase...

Using a dataset on career paths of elite U.S. engineers, including superstar entrepreneurs, we examine the effect of early career choices on long-run entrepreneurial outcomes. Exploiting exogenous variation in entry labor market conditions, driven by local financial sector growth, and comparing...

The impact of house price declines on collateral values for consumer debt is well documented; we are the first to highlight a complementary effect through the bank branching network. Our identification strategy depends on following price declines in one housing market to all bank branches outside...

We develop a version of the The Case-Shiller Index that is robust to credit supply. We first argue that changing financial conditions can affect the market composition and demand for housing, resulting in mismeasured price indices. Second we quantify the causal effects of changes in interest...