How do geographic and historical-cultural factors shape new business formation? Using novel data on new business registrations, we document that 75% of the variation in new business formation is explained by time-invariant county-level factors and examine the extent to which such variation is...

We examine the effect of the introduction of ridesharing services in U.S. cities on fatal traffic accidents. The arrival of ridesharing is associated with an increase of approximately 3% in the number of motor vehicle fatalities and fatal accidents. This increase is not only for vehicle...

Implementing a state-of-the-art machine learning technique for causal identification of the effects of binary treatment from textual analysis, we document that women are under-cited relative to the quality of their patents. For the equivalent patent with a lead female inventor, a patent with a...

We investigate the influence of the growing trend of work-from-home (WFH) on new business formation, with a particular focus on the period surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. At baseline, local new business entry is positively associated with the proportion of occupations amenable to telework in...

This paper evaluates the pros and cons of including private equity fund investments in defined contribution plans. Potential benefits include higher returns and improved diversification as well as a relatively safe method for accessing investments previously only available to institutions and...

The introduction of the gig economy creates opportunities for would-be entrepreneurs to supplement their income in downside states of the world, and provides insurance in the form of an income fallback in the event of failure. We present a conceptual framework supporting the notion that the gig...