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on Entrepreneurship |
| By: | Minjae Kim; J. Daniel Kim |
| Abstract: | Founders are known to attract prospective employees by signaling their startup’s mission, culture, and potential. But do they also shape who stays? And if so, does the founder’s influence diminish as the startup matures? Using matched employer-employee data from the U.S. Census, we address these questions, especially focusing on cases of founder premature death to identify plausibly exogenous exits. We find that founder departures significantly increase employee turnover. These effects are stronger in older and larger startups. Further analyses show that the impact of founder departure is more salient among employees who had longer shared tenure or have the same sex as the founder. These patterns suggest that employees develop complementarities with founders over time—an alignment in skills, relationships, or culture—that reinforce founders’ influence as startups mature. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship, Employee Retention, Founders |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:26-21 |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH)); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena) |
| Abstract: | Historical structures and developments can have a significant and long-lasting impact on the level and the quality of regional entrepreneurship. One explanation for such effects is the formation of a regional "culture", an informal institution which is long-lasting and influences individual behavior. Another explanation for the long-term effects of historical structures and events is the presence of a collective memory. This article reviews the empirical evidence of the historical roots of regional entrepreneurial activity and its potential explanations. Furthermore, the consequences for the development of theories and the policy implications are discussed. Finally, the article reviews promising avenues for further research. |
| Keywords: | History, persistence, long-term effects, institutions, culture, collective memory |
| JEL: | L26 M13 N9 O1 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–04–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2026-004 |
| By: | Valente Fernanda; Chen Yujia; Calabrese Raffaella; Cowling Marc; Alessi Lucia (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the European economy. However, theimpact of nature-related risks on SME creditworthiness is still largely unexplored. To address this gap, we incorporate indicators of nature-related risks - namely the Biodiversity Intactness Index, the HumanFootprint Index, and ENCORE scores - into an Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) credit scoring modelestimated on millions of securitised SME loans. Our results show that both physical and transition riskindicators significantly improve the predictive performance of SME credit models, highlighting the impor-tance of integrating nature-related risk metrics into financial risk assessment frameworks. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrs:wpaper:202601 |
| By: | Crispeels Thomas; De Buyser Emiel; Gavigan James; Compano Ramon (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | - University Venture Capital (UVC) are set up to bridge the funding gap for university spin-offs, targeting deep tech sectors. They contribute to fortify the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem - UVCs pursue dual objectives: financial sustainability and societal impact aligned with university missions - UVC in Europe has been steady increasing over the past decade. - UVCs can be grouped into four main archetypes (Anchor, Sleeping Giant, Foundational and Catalyst), according to their governance models, maturity levels, and role within their local innovation ecosystems - EU policy can accelerate the promotion of UVC through capacity-building, co-investment schemes and alignment with broader R&I instruments (e.g., EIC Fund, Lab-to-Unicorn initiative) |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc145719 |
| By: | Carolina ES Mattsson |
| Abstract: | Growing network models can potentially be a useful tool in the development of economic theory. This work introduces an "opportunistic attachment" mechanism where incoming nodes, in deciding where to join a network, consider features of the entry points available to them. For example, an entrepreneur looking to start a thriving business might consider the expected revenue of many hypothetical businesses. This mechanism is explored, in isolation, via a minimal model where PageRank serves to score the available opportunities. Despite its simplicity, this model gives rise to rich node dynamics, path-dependence, and an unexpected degenerate structure. We go on to argue that this model might be useful to theoretical development as a maximally stylised model of entrepreneurial growth. Central to the argument is an alternative set of microfoundations introduced in Leontief & Brody (1993) whereby the steady state of a random walk is a notion of economic equilibrium. To the extent this argument holds, our findings suggest that entrepreneurs face a shifting "opportunity space" where the number of potential business opportunities is effectively unbounded. Opportunistic attachment is thus a candidate mechanism for relating the structure of an economic system to its future growth. |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2406.11405 |
| By: | Guido Ascari; Andrea Colciago; Marco Membretti |
| Abstract: | Under monetary tightenings, employment at small, high-churn firms con-tracts more than at large incumbents, raising the employment share of large firms. A mixed-frequency BVAR on U.S. data (1983–2018) shows that tight-enings reduce firm entry and new-entrant hiring, severing inflows into small firms, while higher exit destroys small-firm employment. Large incumbents are comparatively insulated, rarely exiting and exhibiting weak sensitivity to entry conditions. This mechanism raises employment concentration, defining an em-ployment concentration channel of monetary policy. An estimated structural model with heterogeneous firms, endogenous entry and exit, and equilibrium unemployment matches this effect, showing that the concentration channel is quantitatively important in accounting for the empirical output-inflation trade-off. |
| Keywords: | Monetary policy; employment concentration; unemployment; heterogeneous firms; BVAR. |
| JEL: | E52 E32 C13 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:859 |