Entrepreneurship.

• Position: Bureau News - Panel Discussion

The NBER's Working Group on Entrepreneurship met in Cambridge on March 19. Its director, Josh Lerner, of NBER and Harvard Business School, organized the meeting.

The NBER's Entrepreneurship Working Group, established in the spring of 2003, brings together some of the leading discipline-based researchers in the field. While the effort largely draws upon those approaching these issues from an economics-based perspective--for instance, from the disciplines of corporate finance, industrial organization, and labor studies--leading researchers from other areas also are involved. The issues being studied--the dynamics of small firms, the structure of venture capital investments and other financing arrangements, the nature of strategic alliances between small and large firms, the role of public policy, and the impact of entrepreneurial activity on growth--are manifold. In addition, a broad range of methodologies must be employed, from detailed analyses of individual contracts to large-sample studies employing Census data. The working group has three components. First, there is a regular series of workshops where new work is presented. Second, there are special projects that look at important themes relating to the economics of entrepreneurship. Finally, there is a provision for advanced doctoral students to visit the NBER for entrepreneurship meetings. The agenda for the March 2004 meeting was:

Boyan Jovanovic, NBER and New York University, "The Pre-Producers" (presented at the Productivity Program meeting on March 12, described earlier in this issue)

Discussant: David Evans, NERA

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, NBER and MIT, "Unbundling Institutions"

Discussant: Enrico Perotri, University of Amsterdam

Philippe Aghion, NBER and University College London, "Entry and Innovation: Theory and Evidence from U.K. and India"

Discussant: Fiona Scott-Morton, NBER and Yale University

Robert W. Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Alicia M. Robb, Foundation for Sustainable Development, "Why Are Black-Owned Businesses Less Successful than White-Owned Businesses? The Role of Families, Inheritances, and Business Human Capital"

Discussant: Timothy Bates, Wayne State University

Bruce Fallick and Charles A. Fleischman, Federal Reserve Board, and James B. Rebitzer, NBER and Case Western Reserve University, "Job Hopping in Silicon Valley: The Micro-Foundations of a High Technology Cluster"

Discussant: David S. Scharfstein, NBER and Harvard University

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