External finance is central for nascent entrepreneurs, people in the process of starting new ventures. We argue that nascent entrepreneurs use patents and prototypes in order to signal their ability to appropriate the returns from their innovation as well as the project´s feasibility. Our...

Using a comprehensive database of European firms, we study how private equity affects the rate of firm entry. We find that private equity investment benefits new business incorporation, especially in industries with naturally higher entry rates and R&D intensity. A two standard deviation...

It is still an open question what kind of smart capital relational investors actually supply. We divide smart capital into several components and conduct a survey among 85 German suppliers of start-up finance. The results show that the degree of "smartness" is determined by the financial product...

We examine whether founders' backgrounds influence new firm survival in the early years after start-up. We develop hypotheses linking founders' back-grounds to pre-entry capabilities associated with entrepreneurial human capital, highlighting the cases of spin-offs and habitual entrepreneurs....

This study is the first to examine the decision to re-enter business ownership by entrepreneurs who have exited their first business using a longitudinal matched employer-employee database. This kind of data allow us to distinguish between those serial entrepreneurs who re-enter business...

This study explores individual and country-level environmental drivers of informal "seed" investment. We examine four types of informal investors based on business ownership experience (or no such experience) and close family relationship with investee (or no such relationship): "classic love...

An important literature has made a fundamental link between corporate governance and corporate strategy. According to agency theory, assigning managers stock options aligns their interests with the interests of the owners of the firm. This paper suggests that this may not apply in the context of...

This paper analyses the association between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth, controlling for measures of firm resources, characteristics of the entrepreneur, and aspects of the environment. The central research question is: How strong is the relationship between dynamic capabilities and...

What makes entrepreneurs different? Using a cross-country dataset, this paper explores essential parts of the value system of entrepreneurs in Western European countries by comparing value items of the self-employed to that of the non-self-employed. The self-employed rate values higher that aim...

This article discusses the Lisbon Agenda from the perspective of entrepreneurship policy. After a brief overview of the events leading up to the development of the Lisbon Agenda, the authors describe the goals and content of this policy framework as well as of the Structural Funds. Using...