March 1, 2023 - Article
Immigrant inventors are key contributors to innovation in the United States, both through their direct productivity and through the spillover effects of their work with native-born collaborators. While accounting for just 16 percent of all US-based inventors, immigrant inventors produce nearly a...
February 2023 - Working Paper30933 In an RCT with US small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11, where debts are renegotiated so that the business can continue operating....
December 2022 - Working Paper30797 We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation, both through their direct productivity as well as through their indirect spillover effects on their native collaborators. To do so, we link patent records to a database containing the first five digits of more than 230 million of...
October 24, 2022 - Article
Job seekers are more interested in working for startups funded by successful venture capitalists than for those whose investors lack positive track records, holding startup quality constant, Shai Bernstein, Kunal Mehta, Richard R. Townsend, and Ting Xu find in Do Startups Benefit from Their...
March 2022 - Working Paper29847 We analyze a field experiment conducted on AngelList Talent, a large online search platform for startup jobs. In the experiment, AngelList randomly informed job seekers of whether a startup was funded by a top-tier investor and/or was funded recently. We find that the same startup receives...
May 2021 - Working Paper28744 This paper examines the interaction between governments and private capital investors when financing early-stage ventures. We first provide a simple conceptual framework to explore when collaboration between governments and private investors is likely to emerge. Using hand-collected data on 755...
October 2020 - Working Paper27907 Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how individuals job search and application behavior changed during the COVID downturn. We find that job seekers shifted their searches toward more established firms and away from early-stage startups, even within the same individual over time....
December 2018 - Working Paper25414 This paper explores the creation and evolution of new stock exchanges around the world geared towards entrepreneurial companies, known as second-tier exchanges. Using hand-collected novel data, we document the proliferation of these new stock exchanges that were created in a large number of...
October 2018 - Working Paper25112 We examine the characteristics of the individuals who become entrepreneurs when local opportunities arise. We identify local demand shocks by linking fluctuations in global commodity prices to municipality-level agricultural endowments in Brazil. We find that the firm creation response is mostly...
November 2017 - Working Paper24011 We investigate how the deterioration of household balance sheets affects worker productivity, and whether such effects mitigate or amplify economic downturns. To do so, we compare the output of innovative workers who experienced different declines in housing wealth, but who were employed at the same...
July 2017 - Working Paper23626 Do private equity firms contribute to financial fragility during economic crises? We find that during the 2008 financial crisis, PE-backed companies increased investments relative to their peers, while also experiencing greater equity and debt inflows. The effects are stronger among financially...
April 2017 - Working Paper23305 This paper investigates the consequences of liquidation and reorganization on the allocation and subsequent utilization of assets in bankruptcy. Using the random assignment of judges to bankruptcy cases as a natural experiment that forces some firms into liquidation, we find that the long-run...
February 2017 - Working Paper23162 How do different bankruptcy approaches affect the local economy? Using U.S. Census microdata at the establishment level, we explore the spillover effects of reorganization and liquidation on geographically proximate firms. We exploit the random assignment of bankruptcy judges as a source of...
January 2010 - Working Paper15632 The growth of the private equity industry has spurred concerns about its potential impact on the economy more generally. This analysis looks across nations and industries to assess the impact of private equity on industry performance. Industries where PE funds have invested in the past five years...
August 1, 2009 - Article
SWFs with political figures involved in their governance have a much greater likelihood of investing domestically, while funds relying on external managers are less likely to do so. The state-owned investment portfolios known as sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have grown impressively over the past...
April 2009 - Working Paper14861 This paper examines the direct private equity investment strategies across sovereign wealth funds and their relationship to the funds' organizational structures. SWFs seem to engage in a form of trend chasing, since they are more likely to invest at home when domestic equity prices are higher, and...
