Social capital of venture capitalists and start-up funding

How does the social capital of venture capitalists (VCs) affect the funding of start-ups? By building on the rich social capital literature, we hypothesize a positive effect of VCs' social capital, derived from past syndication, on the amount of money that start-ups receive. Specifically, we argue that both structural and relational aspects of VCs' social networks provide VCs with superior access to information about current investment objects and opportunities to leverage them in the future, increasing their willingness to invest in these firms. Our empirical results, derived from a novel dataset containing more than 1,500 first funding rounds in the Internet and IT sector, strongly confirm our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of venture capital and entrepreneurship, showing that the role and effect of VCs' social capital on start-up firms may be more complex than previously argued in the literature

Scott A. Shane: winner of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

Entrepreneurship Award Winner, Theory development, Methodological development, Entrepreneurship, G24, L26, M13, O31,

Timing of Immigration Effects Asset Change Among Hispanic Caregivers of Older Family Members

Given the cultural value of family in Hispanic culture, older Hispanic immigrants are likely to have family caregivers. This study examined the economic implications of caring for older Hispanic adults regarding non-housing financial wealth over time. Using the 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and RAND HRS data files, this study compares changes in the non-housing financial wealth between 2008 and 2012 by caregiving and immigration status among Hispanics. This study examined differences in assets between Hispanic caregivers and non-caregivers and more specifically examined the subpopulation of Hispanic caregivers who immigrated prior to and after 1968 as compared to U.S.-born caregivers to better understand the effect of the Immigration and Nationality Amendment Act of 1965 on asset change. Results indicate that caregiving itself did not have a statistically significant association with wealth, but the timing of immigration to the US had a statistically significant correlation (p \u3c.05) with changes in the financial wealth. The findings of this study have implications for policy and program development targeting older adults and caregiving for this population

Did firm age, experience, and access to finance count? SME performance after the global financial crisis

© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper examines the relationships between firm age and entrepreneurs experience on SME performance after the 2008/09 global financial crisis. We find that in general the crisis had a long-lasting scarring effect on the SME sector, but there is evidence of some recovery in performance. Interestingly, the well-established, and negative, firm age-growth relationship still holds, but entrepreneurial experience did not have any substantive effects on small business performance. Our findings suggest that the severity of the crisis meant that previous entrepreneur experiences had little value in this unique and uncertain environment. However, young firms still accounted for a disproportionately high share of growth, especially among the fastest growing firms