Shai Benjamin Bernstein

Marvin Bower Associate Professor

Shai Bernstein is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in both the Corporate Finance group and the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship group. Much of his research focuses on financial issues related to start-ups, and high growth firms, and the interaction of these issues with innovation and entrepreneurial activity. He teaches the Entrepreneurial Finance course in the MBA elective curriculum. Shai completed his Ph.D. in Business Economics at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Shai spent eight years as a faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/shai-bernstein/home

Entrepreneurial Management

+1 (617) 495-5053

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Unit

Entrepreneurial Management

Contact Information

(617) 495-5053

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Publications

Awards & Honors

Working Papers

Working Papers

Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman, and Benjamin Iverson. "Life After Death: A Field Experiment with Small Businesses on Information Frictions, Stigma, and Bankruptcy." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30933, February 2023. View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Kunal Mehta, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu. "Do Startups Benefit from Their Investors' Reputation? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-060, February 2022. View Details
Bai, Jessica, Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev, and Josh Lerner. "The Dance Between Government and Private Investors: Public Entrepreneurial Finance around the Globe." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-120, April 2021. (Revised January 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu. "Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-045, September 2020. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade, and Beatriz Pousada. "The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-065, December 2021. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30797, December 2022.) View Details

Journal Articles

Journal Articles

Bernstein, Shai, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu. "Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups." Review of Financial Studies (forthcoming). View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "The Effects of Public and Private Equity Markets on Firm Behavior." Annual Review of Financial Economics 14 (2022): 295–318. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, and Scott Duke Kominers. "Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (December 7, 2022). View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Emanuele Colonnelli, Davide Malacrino, and Timothy McQuade. "Who Creates New Firms When Local Opportunities Arise?" Journal of Financial Economics 143, no. 1 (January 2022): 107–130. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, and Filippo Mezzanotti. "Private Equity and Portfolio Companies: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis." Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 32, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 21–41. View Details
Bernstein, S., T. McQuade, and R. Townsend. "Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession." Journal of Finance 76, no. 1 (February 2021): 57–111. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Abhishek Dev, and Josh Lerner. "The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets." Journal of Financial Economics 136, no. 2 (May 2020): 307–329. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Emanuele Colonnelli, Xavier Giroud, and Benjamin Iverson. "Bankruptcy Spillovers." Special Issue on Labor and Finance. Journal of Financial Economics 133, no. 3 (September 2019): 608–633. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, and Filippo Mezzanotti. "Private Equity and Financial Fragility during the Crisis." Review of Financial Studies 32, no. 4 (April 2019): 1309–1373. (Earlier version distributed as National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 23626 and Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 18-005.) View Details
Bernstein, S., E. Colonnelli, and B. Iverson. "Asset Allocation in Bankruptcy." Journal of Finance 74, no. 1 (February 2019): 5–53. (Lead Article.) View Details
Bernstein, S., A. Korteweg, and K. Laws. "Attracting Early Stage Investors: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." Journal of Finance 72, no. 2 (April 2017): 509–538. (Lead Article.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, and Albert Sheen. "The Operational Consequences of Private Equity Buyouts: Evidence from the Restaurant Industry." Review of Financial Studies 29, no. 9 (September 2016): 2387–2418. View Details
Bernstein, S., X. Giroud, and R. Townsend. "The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring." Journal of Finance 71, no. 4 (August 2016): 1591–1622. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen, and Per Stromberg. "Private Equity and Industry Performance." Management Science 63, no. 4 (April 2017): 1198–1213. View Details
Bernstein, S. "Does Going Public Affect Innovation?" Journal of Finance 70, no. 4 (August 2015): 1365–1403. (Brattle Prize Winner for Best Paper in the Journal of Finance.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, and Antoinette Schoar. "The Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds." Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 219–238. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, and Eyal Winter. "Contracting with Heterogeneous Externalities." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 4, no. 2 (May 2012): 50–76. View Details

Cases and Teaching Materials

Cases and Teaching Materials

Bernstein, Shai, and Allison M. Ciechanover. "Ribbit Capital and the Gauntlet Investment Opportunity." Harvard Business School Case 823-038, December 2022. (Revised December 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Scott Duke Kominers, and George Gonzalez. "LooksRare: The Decentralized, Tokenized, NFT Marketplace." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 823-046, August 2022. View Details
Kominers, Scott Duke, Shai Bernstein, and George Gonzalez. "LooksRare: The Decentralized, Tokenized, NFT Marketplace." Harvard Business School Case 822-119, March 2022. (Revised August 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, William R. Kerr, Jim Matheson, Christopher Stanton, and Ria Mazumdar. "Chime Solutions." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 822-135, May 2022. View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "Managing Exits and Liquidity in Entrepreneurial Finance." Harvard Business School Module Note 822-107, March 2022. View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin. "Luminar and the Rise of SPACs." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 822-106, February 2022. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Gompers, Paul A., Shai Bernstein, Matthew Wozny, and Alex Gachanja. "Luminar and the Rise of SPACs." Harvard Business School Case 221-099, June 2021. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, William R. Kerr, Christopher Stanton, and Mel Martin. "Chime Solutions." Harvard Business School Case 821-105, March 2021. View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "CleanWater, Inc.: Running Dry & Out of Time." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 821-048, October 2020. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 821-049, October 2020. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Terrence Shu. "PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 820-085, January 2020. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, Ann Leamon, and Richard Sessa. "GeBBS Healthcare Solutions: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 820-074, December 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Terrence Shu. "PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund." Harvard Business School Case 820-030, August 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, Ann Leamon, and Richard Sessa. "GeBBS Healthcare Solutions: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" Harvard Business School Case 820-041, December 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Ann Leamon. "Hony Capital and Jushi Group." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 820-073, December 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Ann Leamon. "Hony Capital and Jushi Group." Harvard Business School Case 820-040, October 2019. View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin. "GeBBS Healthcare Solutions: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? (A) and (B)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 820-094, January 2020. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Ramana Nanda, and Allison Ciechanover. "NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries." Harvard Business School Case 820-038, October 2019. (Revised January 2020.) View Details

All Publications

Shai Bernstein is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in both the Corporate Finance group and the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship group. Much of his research focuses on financial issues related to start-ups, and high growth firms, and the interaction of these issues with innovation and entrepreneurial activity. He teaches the Entrepreneurial Finance course in the MBA elective curriculum. Shai completed his Ph.D. in Business Economics at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Shai spent eight years as a faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business

Personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/shai-bernstein/home

Working Papers

Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman, and Benjamin Iverson. "Life After Death: A Field Experiment with Small Businesses on Information Frictions, Stigma, and Bankruptcy." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30933, February 2023. View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Kunal Mehta, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu. "Do Startups Benefit from Their Investors' Reputation? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-060, February 2022. View Details
Bai, Jessica, Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev, and Josh Lerner. "The Dance Between Government and Private Investors: Public Entrepreneurial Finance around the Globe." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-120, April 2021. (Revised January 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu. "Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-045, September 2020. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade, and Beatriz Pousada. "The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-065, December 2021. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30797, December 2022.) View Details

Journal Articles

Bernstein, Shai, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu. "Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups." Review of Financial Studies (forthcoming). View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "The Effects of Public and Private Equity Markets on Firm Behavior." Annual Review of Financial Economics 14 (2022): 295–318. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, and Scott Duke Kominers. "Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (December 7, 2022). View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Emanuele Colonnelli, Davide Malacrino, and Timothy McQuade. "Who Creates New Firms When Local Opportunities Arise?" Journal of Financial Economics 143, no. 1 (January 2022): 107–130. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, and Filippo Mezzanotti. "Private Equity and Portfolio Companies: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis." Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 32, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 21–41. View Details
Bernstein, S., T. McQuade, and R. Townsend. "Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession." Journal of Finance 76, no. 1 (February 2021): 57–111. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Abhishek Dev, and Josh Lerner. "The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets." Journal of Financial Economics 136, no. 2 (May 2020): 307–329. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Emanuele Colonnelli, Xavier Giroud, and Benjamin Iverson. "Bankruptcy Spillovers." Special Issue on Labor and Finance. Journal of Financial Economics 133, no. 3 (September 2019): 608–633. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, and Filippo Mezzanotti. "Private Equity and Financial Fragility during the Crisis." Review of Financial Studies 32, no. 4 (April 2019): 1309–1373. (Earlier version distributed as National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 23626 and Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 18-005.) View Details
Bernstein, S., E. Colonnelli, and B. Iverson. "Asset Allocation in Bankruptcy." Journal of Finance 74, no. 1 (February 2019): 5–53. (Lead Article.) View Details
Bernstein, S., A. Korteweg, and K. Laws. "Attracting Early Stage Investors: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." Journal of Finance 72, no. 2 (April 2017): 509–538. (Lead Article.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, and Albert Sheen. "The Operational Consequences of Private Equity Buyouts: Evidence from the Restaurant Industry." Review of Financial Studies 29, no. 9 (September 2016): 2387–2418. View Details
Bernstein, S., X. Giroud, and R. Townsend. "The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring." Journal of Finance 71, no. 4 (August 2016): 1591–1622. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen, and Per Stromberg. "Private Equity and Industry Performance." Management Science 63, no. 4 (April 2017): 1198–1213. View Details
Bernstein, S. "Does Going Public Affect Innovation?" Journal of Finance 70, no. 4 (August 2015): 1365–1403. (Brattle Prize Winner for Best Paper in the Journal of Finance.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Josh Lerner, and Antoinette Schoar. "The Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds." Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 219–238. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, and Eyal Winter. "Contracting with Heterogeneous Externalities." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 4, no. 2 (May 2012): 50–76. View Details

Cases and Teaching Materials

Bernstein, Shai, and Allison M. Ciechanover. "Ribbit Capital and the Gauntlet Investment Opportunity." Harvard Business School Case 823-038, December 2022. (Revised December 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin, Scott Duke Kominers, and George Gonzalez. "LooksRare: The Decentralized, Tokenized, NFT Marketplace." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 823-046, August 2022. View Details
Kominers, Scott Duke, Shai Bernstein, and George Gonzalez. "LooksRare: The Decentralized, Tokenized, NFT Marketplace." Harvard Business School Case 822-119, March 2022. (Revised August 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai, William R. Kerr, Jim Matheson, Christopher Stanton, and Ria Mazumdar. "Chime Solutions." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 822-135, May 2022. View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "Managing Exits and Liquidity in Entrepreneurial Finance." Harvard Business School Module Note 822-107, March 2022. View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin. "Luminar and the Rise of SPACs." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 822-106, February 2022. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Gompers, Paul A., Shai Bernstein, Matthew Wozny, and Alex Gachanja. "Luminar and the Rise of SPACs." Harvard Business School Case 221-099, June 2021. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, William R. Kerr, Christopher Stanton, and Mel Martin. "Chime Solutions." Harvard Business School Case 821-105, March 2021. View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "CleanWater, Inc.: Running Dry & Out of Time." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 821-048, October 2020. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Bernstein, Shai. "NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 821-049, October 2020. (Revised March 2022.) View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Terrence Shu. "PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 820-085, January 2020. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, Ann Leamon, and Richard Sessa. "GeBBS Healthcare Solutions: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 820-074, December 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Terrence Shu. "PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund." Harvard Business School Case 820-030, August 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, Ann Leamon, and Richard Sessa. "GeBBS Healthcare Solutions: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" Harvard Business School Case 820-041, December 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Ann Leamon. "Hony Capital and Jushi Group." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 820-073, December 2019. View Details
Lerner, Josh, Shai Bernstein, and Ann Leamon. "Hony Capital and Jushi Group." Harvard Business School Case 820-040, October 2019. View Details
Bernstein, Shai Benjamin. "GeBBS Healthcare Solutions: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind? (A) and (B)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 820-094, January 2020. View Details
Bernstein, Shai, Ramana Nanda, and Allison Ciechanover. "NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries." Harvard Business School Case 820-038, October 2019. (Revised January 2020.) View Details

Awards & Honors

Winner of the 2019 Charles River Associates Award for Best Paper on Corporate Finance from the Western Finance Association with Rebecca Diamond, Timothy McQuade, and Beatriz Pousada for “The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States.”

Selected as Dhirubhai Ambani Faculty Scholar in Entrepreneurship, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2015-2016.

Additional Information