NBER Working Papers by Oana Hirakawa

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 are defined either as the director/manager having moved from a parent in the same industry or as one-quarter of the employees having shifted from a common parent. Depending on definition, employee spinoffs account for between one-sixth and one-third of the new firms in Brazil’s private sector during this period. Regardless of definition, size at entry is larger for employee spinoffs than for new firms without parents but smaller than for diversification ventures of existing firms. Similarly, exit rates...