Industrial   Organization is about how firms are organized into and compete in markets,   and this program is about how firms originate and grow in the first place.   More specifically, entrepreneurship is about how people start firms, and firm   dynamics is about how they grow or exit. (Firm entry is part of both topics.)  

Requirements: The   program requirements are two discussant reports. The first should be 1 page   long. You can choose one or multiple of the references to read and write a   report. In the report, you should summarize what the paper is doing, provide   your comments, and discuss your interests on relevant topics.

The second report   will be a slide presentation lasting 30 minutes. All presentations will be   made during the last week of our program, and you can pick the day for your   presentation as soon as I have approved the paper you are going to present.

Outline

• The Empirics of   Entrepreneurial Venture Creation

            –    Bhide, Amar. 2000. The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses (New   York: Oxford University Press), Introduction and Chapter 1.
  –  Hurst, Eric and Pugsley, Benjamin W. 2011. “What Do Small Businesses   Do?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Fall): 73-118. See also comment   by Haltiwanger, pp. 119-128.

• Theories of Entrepreneurship
  –  Lucas, Robert E. 1978. “On the Size Distribution of Business Firms.”   Bell Journal of Economics 9: 508-523.                                                                                               –  Kihlstrom, Richard E. and La↵ont, Jean-Jacques. 1979. “A General   Equilibrium Entrepreneurial Theory of Firm Formation Based on Risk Aversion.”   Journal of Political Economy 87: 719-748.

• Financial Constraints and Firm Dynamics  

            –    Wang, Shing-Yi. 2012. ”Credit constraints, job mobility, and   entrepreneurship: evidence from a property reform in china.” Review of Economics   and Statistics 94.2: 532-551.
  –  Jovanovic, Boyan. 1982. “Selection and the Evolution of Industry.”   Econometrica 50: 649-70.

            –    Cabral, Lu ́ıs M. B. and Mata, Jos ́e. 2003. “On the Evolution of the   Firm Size Distribution: Facts and Theory.” American Economic Review 93:   1075-90.
  Extra Reading (Optional): Parker, Simon C. The Economics of Entrepreneurship   (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2009 ($57.00 on Amazon).
  This text covers the literature much more broadly than our program, which   instead focuses on a few topics to cover in depth.