This chapter surveys recent advances in personnel economics. We begin by presenting
evidence showing substantial and persistent productivity variation among workers in the …

How does access to public equity markets affect real outcomes? We examine the human
capital of IPO-filing firms and how going public affects their labor force. While IPO-filing firms …

We show that patents related to clean energy generation and storage, changes to industrial
production, and carbon capture and sequestration—where breakthroughs are seen as being …

This paper develops the first option pricing model of venture capital-backed companies and
their security values that incorporates the dilutive future financing rounds prevalent in the …

In a dynamic principal-agent model, the principal, financing the project, cannot observe
project failure and the agent, develo** the project, can hide failure. As there is a tension …

We provide causal evidence on how individual venture capitalists (VCs) add value to
startups, using exogenous deaths of VC directors on startup boards. Losing a VC director …

Science-based R&D can deter venture capitalists due to high technical uncertainty. We
study whether mission-oriented public funding, which supplies basic science as a public …

At the heart of entrepreneurial finance lies a persuasion challenge: regardless of the
strength of an entrepreneur's belief in the potential of their idea, they typically need to …

We examine the effect of board members with venture capital experience (VC directors) on
executive incentives at non-venture-backed public firms. VC directors serving on the …

Venture capital (VC) investors have financed some of the world's most innovative, and most
valuable, companies. In fact, in the USA, VC-backed companies account for almost 50% of …