Lowering the Bar? External Conditions, Opportunity Costs, and High-Tech Start-Up Outcomes
研究了经济衰退如何影响个人创办高科技企业的决策，发现失业率上升导致更多对劳动力市场敏感的人创业，但这些初创企业的财务和创新表现更差。
We assess the heterogeneous impact of economic downturns on individuals’ decisions to bring high-technology ideas to the market in the form of new ventures. We thereby examine how worsening labor market conditions influence individuals’ opportunity costs of starting new ventures, the resulting composition of the entrepreneurial pool, and start-up performance outcomes. Using a rich data set of start-up founders in the biotechnology and medical device sectors, we find that an increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a substantial rise in the share of entrepreneurs who are most sensitive to worsening labor market conditions. Additionally, we find that start-ups founded by these entrepreneurs display lower financial and innovative performance than start-ups founded by entrepreneurs who are relatively insensitive to business cycles. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that individuals’ heterogeneous response to worsening labor market conditions is a relevant factor in explaining the negative relationship between unemployment and start-up performance outcomes.