Although human capital externalities are a key variable in theories of economic growth, there has been little investigation of the mechanism by which these externalities are realized. We examine the relationship between the local levels of human capital and firm formation rates and find that...

A new model of economic growth introduces the knowledge filter between new knowledge and economically useful knowledge. It identifies both new ventures and incumbent firms as the mechanisms that penetrate the knowledge filter. Recent empirical work has shown that new firms are more proficient at...

In this study, we quantify the role of foreign-born founders in high-tech entrepreneurship in a nationally representative sample of rapidly growing high-impact companies. This class of companies drives job creation and aggregate growth in the U.S. We find that, while most previous studies have...