Publications

Educators

2022
Working Paper

Small Campaign Donors

By: Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons

In this paper, we study the characteristics and behavior of small donors, and compare them to those of large donors. We first build a novel dataset including all the 340 million individual contributions reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission between 2005 and... View Details

Keywords: Campaign Finance; Campaign Contributions; Small Donations; ActBlue; WinRed; TV Advertising; Political Elections; Finance; Demographics; Advertising; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science

2025
Working Paper

Data-driven Technologies and Local Information Advantages in Small Business Lending

By: Wilbur Chen, Jung Koo Kang and Aditya Mohan

We investigate whether banks' adoption of data-driven technologies influences competitive dynamics in local small business lending by diminishing the information advantages traditionally held by local banks. Using local newspaper closures as an adverse shock to the... View Details

Keywords: Data-driven Technologies; Local Information Advantages; Local Banks; Relationship Lending; Small Business Loans; Small Business; Local Range; Financing and Loans; Banks and Banking; Analytics and Data Science; Banking Industry

SSRN

2017
Book

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Find, acquire, and run your own business. Are you looking for an alternative to a career path at a big firm? Does founding your own start-up seem too risky? There is a radical third path open to you: you can buy a small business and run it as CEO. Purchasing a small... View Details

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2019
Book

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity

By: Karen G. Mills

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream describes the needs of small businesses for capital and demonstrates how technology—novel data sources, artificial intelligence, machine learning—will transform the small business lending market. This market has been... View Details

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Article

Large Banks and Small Firm Lending

By: Vitaly Bord, Victoria Ivashina and Ryan D. Taliaferro

We examine the long-lasting effects of the 2007 real estate price collapse on small business credit supply. Banks affected by the decline in real estate prices systematically contracted their credit to small firms. At the same time, regional and local banks, many of... View Details

Keywords: Small Firms; Credit Supply; Banking Competition; Small Business; Credit; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Competition

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2017
Working Paper

Patent Trolls and Small Business Employment

By: Ian Appel, Joan Farre-Mensa and Elena Simintzi

We analyze how frivolous patent-infringement claims made by “patent trolls” affect small firms’ ability to create jobs, raise capital, and survive. Our identification strategy exploits the staggered passage of anti-patent-troll laws at the state level. We find that the... View Details

Keywords: Patent Trolls; Patents; Small Business; Employment; Venture Capital

SSRN

Research Summary

Financing New Business Formation

By: Paul A. Gompers

New business creation has become a potent force for economicdevelopment in the United States. Prior to 1980, large firms created the majority of new jobs in the American economy. While considerable debate rages over whether small firms are the source of recent job... View Details

5 Feb 2013
Conference Presentation

Financing Entrepreneurial Growth

By: Tom Alberg, Andrew A. Bogan, Harold Bradley, Robert D. Cooter, Monika Gruter Cheney, Oliver R. Goodenough, William R. Hambrecht, Frank Hatheway, Thomas F. Hellmann, Marianne Hudson, Jared Konczal, Josh Lerner, Robert E. Litan, Diane Mulcahy, Ramana Nanda, Frank Partnoy, Joe Ratterman, Nava Ravikant, Jay R. Ritter, Alicia Robb, David T. Robinson, Allison Schrager, Barry Silbert, E. R. Sirri, Daniel Stangler and Sharon Vosmek

Despite recent innovations in entrepreneurial finance, particularly at the early stage of business creation, many new and young companies continue to face hurdles to acquire capital.

The Kauffman Foundation addressed current challenges and opportunities in... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Entrepreneurial Finance; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; United States

SSRN

01 Feb 2012
What Do You Think?

Is Support for Small Business Misplaced?

Summing Up Do Concerns About Job Creation By Small Businesses Miss The Point? Judging from responses to this month's column, there appears to be a visceral reaction to any suggestion that View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2021
Chapter

Building Small Business Utopia: How Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Can Increase Small Business Success

By: Karen G. Mills and Annie Dang

Small business lending has remained unchanged for decades, laden with frictions and barriers that prevent many small businesses from accessing the capital they need to succeed. Financial technology, or “fintech,” promises to change this trajectory. In 2010, new fintech... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Fintech; Artificial Intelligence; Small Business; Financing and Loans; Capital; Success; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science

Research Summary

Building Small Business Utopia: How Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Can Increase Small Business Success

By: Karen Mills

Small business lending has remained unchanged for decades, laden with frictions and barriers that prevent many small businesses from accessing the capital they need to succeed. Financial technology, or “fintech,” promises to change this trajectory. In 2010, new fintech... View Details

October 2013 (Revised April 2018)
Technical Note

Non-Equity Financing for Entrepreneurial Ventures

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, Ramana Nanda and Piyush Jain

Young, and particularly high-growth ventures often need to raise significant external finance, since their internal cash flow is usually insufficient to support the investments needed to grow. Although raising equity from venture capital or angel investors is the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Financial Services Industry

Educators

24 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

Why Small Businesses Deserve More Credit

could lead to substantial growth.” But new research suggests that small businesses are far more fiscally conservative than banks realize. In fact, firms with up to 10 employees hold back spending on their... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services; Banking

2024
Working Paper

The Pay of Finance Professors

By: Claire Célérier, Boris Vallée and Alexey Vasilenko

This paper documents the existence of a significant wage finance premium in academia, and investigates its underlying mechanism. By exploiting an extensive dataset covering wages, publications and socio-demographics for 60,000 public-university faculty from all fields,... View Details

Keywords: Finance Wage Premium; Finance Academia; Wages; Higher Education

03 Apr 2019
Book

Fintech's Game-Changing Opportunities for Small Business

will dramatically change the options for small businesses.” Her new book, Fintech, Small Business, & the American Dream: How Technology is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Banking; Financial Services

September 2014
Teaching Note

Entrepreneurial Finance Lab: Scaling an Innovative Start-up Financing Venture

By: Joan Farre-Mensa

The Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL) is a financial technology start-up that has developed a new tool that uses psychometric tests to aid banks in developing markets with credit scoring of business loan applicants. EFL's ultimate goal is to solve the financing gap... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry

November 2018
Case

Goldman Sachs: The 10,000 Small Businesses Program

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia

In 2008, Goldman Sachs started the 10,000 Small Businesses program to help small businesses in the United States by providing education and a network of support—at no cost —and access to capital. It required the firm to create a new business ecosystem with a wide... View Details

Keywords: Ecosystem; Public/private Partnership; Small Business; Programs; Education; Partners and Partnerships; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States

Educators

22 May 2014
Other Presentation

Inclusion of Small Business in Value Chains

By: Michael E. Porter

Prerecorded CSV video played as part of the panel "Inclusion of small business in value chains - international experiences," Business Linkages conference. This event was hosted by the leading Brazilian small business development agency, Sebrae, on May 21 and May 22,... View Details

Keywords: Creating Shared Value; Value Chain; Society; Customer Value and Value Chain; Brazil