In the large literature on firm performance, economists have given little attention to entrepreneurs. We use deaths of more than 500 entrepreneurs as a source of exogenous variation, and ask whether this variation can explain shifts in firm performance. Using longitudinal data, we find large and...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...

In this paper we identify two situations that can lead a firm to hire an executive who supports a corporate culture that differs from the firm's current culture. In the first case, there is similarity between the firm's culture and that of the candidate and in the second case, executives who...

In this paper we present and test a theory of how political corruption, found in many transition and emerging market economies, affects corporate governance and productive efficiency of firms. Our model predicts that underdeveloped democratic institutions that do not punish political corruption...

The fall of labor's share of GDP in the United States and many other countries in recent decades is well documented but its causes remain uncertain. Existing empirical assessments of trends in labor's share typically have relied on industry or macro data, obscuring heterogeneity among firms. In...