We explore how financial constraints distort the entry decisions among otherwise productive entrepreneurs and limit growth of promising young firms. A model of liquidity-constrained entrepreneurs suggests that the easing of credit constraints can induce more entry of firms with greater long-run...

New firms do not yet have employees who can aid recruiting by referrals, but entrepreneurs can recruit workers they know to their startups--in effect making their own referrals. We consider new firms in Brazil's formal sector founded between 2002 and 2014, for which at least one founding owner...

"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...