IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Firm Size and the Quality of Entrepreneurs

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Hvide, Hans K.

    ()

    (Dept. of Finance and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

Abstract

A theory is proposed where the pay policy and size of established firms are determined together with individual workers' entrepreneurship decision. The main results are twofold. First, taking the firm size as given, larger firms tend to have less flexible wages and produce entrepreneurs of higher quality than small firms. Second, making firm size edogenous, we find that stronger property rights makes the optimal firm size larger (and the average quality of entrepreneurs higher). To illustrate the theory, we consider two sources of evidence: data on the quality of entrepreneurs from a survey of Stanford MBA alumnus, and the evolution of firm size in the U.S. Software Industry after a recent strengthening in software patent protection. Both hypotheses receive encouraging support.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/163668
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Department of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number 2004/9.

as
in new window

Length: 51 pages
Date of creation: 04 Jun 2004
Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2004_009
Contact details of provider: Postal:
NHH, Department of Business and Management Science, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

Phone: +47 55 95 92 93
Fax: +47 55 95 96 50
Web page: http://www.nhh.no/en/research-faculty/department-of-business-and-management-science.aspx
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation; IPP; Private benefits; Property Rights; Spin-offs; Start-ups;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

  • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Anton, James J & Yao, Dennis A, 1994. "Expropriation and Inventions: Appropriable Rents in the Absence of Property Rights," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 190-209, March.
  2. de Meza, David & Southey, Clive, 1996. "The Borrower's Curse: Optimism, Finance and Entrepreneurship," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(435), pages 375-386, March.
  3. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 2001. "The Firm as a Dedicated Hierarchy: A Theory of the Origins and Growth of Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(3), pages 805-851.
  4. Evans, David S & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1989. "An Estimated Model of Entrepreneurial Choice under Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 808-827, August.
  5. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
  6. Veld, Chris & Veld-Merkoulova, Yulia V., 2004. "Do spin-offs really create value? The European case," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 1111-1135, May.
  7. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
  8. Aghion, P. & Tirole, J., 1993. "On the Management of Innovation," Working papers 93-12, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  9. Douglas Holtz-Eakin & David Joulfaian & Harvey S. Rosen, 1994. "Entrepreneurial Decisions and Liquidity Constraints," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 334-347, Summer.
  10. Thomas Hellmann & Manju Puri, 2002. "Venture Capital and the Professionalization of Start-Up Firms: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 169-197, 02.
  11. Wesley M. Cohen & Richard R. Nelson & John P. Walsh, 2000. "Protecting Their Intellectual Assets: Appropriability Conditions and Why U.S. Manufacturing Firms Patent (or Not)," NBER Working Papers 7552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Anton, James J & Yao, Dennis A, 1995. "Start-ups, Spin-offs, and Internal Projects," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 362-378, October.
  13. Robert M. Hunt & James Bessen, 2004. "The software patent experiment," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q3, pages 22-32.
  14. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2002. "Financial and legal constraints to firm growth - Does size matter?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2784, The World Bank.
  15. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "Power in a Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 113(2), pages 387-432.
  16. Bates, Timothy, 1990. "Entrepreneur Human Capital Inputs and Small Business Longevity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(4), pages 551-559, November.
  17. Thomas Hellmann, 2007. "When Do Employees Become Entrepreneurs?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(6), pages 919-933, June.
  18. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2003. "Financial and legal institutions and firm size," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2997, The World Bank.
  19. William M. Gentry & R. Glenn Hubbard, 2000. "Entrepreneurship and Household Saving," NBER Working Papers 7894, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  20. Landier, Augustin & Thesmar, David, 2003. "Financial Contracting with Optimistic Entrepreneurs: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 3971, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  21. Evans, David S & Leighton, Linda S, 1989. "Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 519-535, June.
  22. repec:adr:anecst:y:1996:i:41-42:p:14 is not listed on IDEAS
  23. Philippe Aghion & Jean Tirole, 1994. "The Management of Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(4), pages 1185-1209.
  24. Desai, Hemang & Jain, Prem C., 1999. "Firm performance and focus: long-run stock market performance following spinoffs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 75-101, October.
  25. Barton H. Hamilton, 2000. "Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns to Self-Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 604-631, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Muendler, Marc-Andreas & Rauch, James E. & Tocoian, Oana, 2012. "Employee spinoffs and other entrants: Stylized facts from Brazil," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 447-458.
  2. Matthias Benz, "undated". "Entrepreneurship as a non-profit-seeking activity," IEW - Working Papers 243, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2004_009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Stein Fossen)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.