In this paper, we traced the survival status of 94,401 small businesses in 17 European emerging markets from 2007–2017 and empirically examined the determinants of their survival, focusing on institutional quality and financial development. We found that institutional quality and the level of...

We study the economic implications of regional favoritism, a form of distributive politics that redistributes resources geographically within countries. Using enterprise surveys from low- and middle-income countries, we document that firms located close to leaders' birthplaces grow substantially...

We present a theoretical and empirical analysis of the links between the gender of an entrepreneur, access to finance, occupational choice, and business performance. Our theoretical model predicts that, when lenders discriminate against women entrepreneurs, the average entrepreneurial skill of...

A puzzling but consistent result in the empirical literature on banking is that firms with close bank ties do not grow faster than bank-independent firms. In this paper, we reconsider the link between relationship lending and firms' growth, distinguishing firms by size and "health". The idea is...

The paper investigates the survival of newly created small and medium enterprises in Brazilian manufacturing taking as reference the 1996-2005 period. The econometric analysis relies on time-varying version of the proportional hazard rate model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity. The...

Do firms in developing countries shift trade towards developed economies as a result of high economic growth? The matched customs-manufacturing firm data used in this study confront this hypothesized link with empirical evidence. Our analysis reveals a rising low-income country trade share...

We analyze performance under pressure and estimate the causal effect of audience size on the success of free throws in top-level professional basketball. We use data from the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the seasons 2007/08 through 2015/16. We exploit the exogenous variation in...

We investigate the role of workers' and managerial experience as a determinant of firm innovation and productivity in a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. A high share of temporary - thus un-experienced - workers is associated to low innovation and productivity. The effect of managerial...