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Working Paper
Competition by choice
This paper relates firm location choice and consumer search. Firms that cluster together attract consumers by facilitating price comparison, but clustering increases the intensity of local competition. I construct a simple model which shows that firms may choose head-on competition by locating together. In special cases, this can be the unique equilibrium outcome. I also use the model to show that price setting firms may earn more in equilibrium than quantity setting firms.
Working Paper
Entrepreneurship and the policy environment
This paper uses a spatial panel approach to examine the effect of the government-policy environment on the level of entrepreneurship. Specifically, we investigate whether marginal income tax rates and bankruptcy exemptions influence rates of entrepreneurship. Whereas previous work in the literature finds that both policies are positively related to entrepreneurship, we find non-monotonic relationships: a U-shaped relationship between marginal tax rates and entrepreneurship and an S-shaped relationship between bankruptcy exemptions and entrepreneurship.
Working Paper
Spin-offs and the market for ideas
The authors propose a theory of firm dynamics in which workers have ideas for new projects that can be sold in a market to existing firms or implemented in new firms: spin-offs. Workers have private information about the quality of their ideas. Because of an adverse selection problem, workers can sell their ideas to existing firms only at a price that is not contingent on their information. The authors show that the option to spin off in the future is valuable so only workers with very good ideas decide to spin off and set up a new firm. Since entrepreneurs of existing firms pay a price for ...
Conference Paper
Business-to-business: challenges and opportunities
Journal Article
Evidence on entrepreneurs in the United States: data from the 1989–2004 survey of consumer finances
Using data from the Federal Reserve Board?s Survey of Consumer Finances, the authors examine characteristics of entrepreneurs and the businesses they run. Their analysis confirms that business owners are important sources of saving and wealth creation in the U.S. and that they are less risk averse than other wealthy households. This discounts the notion that the wealth of entrepreneurs disproportionately reflects a buildup of precautionary balances to guard against financial risk.
Working Paper
Wage rigidity: a look inside the firm
This paper tests for nominal salary rigidity using panel data from two large service-sector firms. Distributions of the firms' salary changes exhibit nominal rigidity: few nominal pay cuts, a pile-up of observations at zero, and positive skewness and asymmetry. In addition, these characteristics become more pronounced in periods of low inflation. These results are much stronger than those found in the previous literature. Further analysis shows that the sizable measurement error in the PSID and the fact that establishment surveys typically follow average wages within jobs may bias the results ...
Journal Article
Employee ownership: economic miracle or ESOP's fable?
Worker ownership is a growing phenomenon, but experts are divided as to its inherent rewards.
Working Paper
Research and development with asymmetric firm sizes