Entrepreneurial Management

- August 2025
- Article
Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar

Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business revenues declined by 40 percent, largely driven by national factors rather than local infection rates or policies. However, the pass-through of revenue losses to owner consumption was limited: each dollar of revenue loss resulted in only a 1.6-cent decline in consumption. This muted pass-through persisted through 2021, even after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. Our findings suggest that federal subsidies and pandemic-induced reductions in spending opportunities explain the limited impact.
- August 2025
- Article
Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar

Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business revenues declined by 40 percent, largely driven by national factors rather than local...
- June 2025
- Article
Collusion in Brokered Markets

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Richard Lowery

High commissions in the U.S. residential real estate agency market present a puzzle for economic theory because brokerage is not a concentrated industry. We model brokered markets as a game in which agents post prices for customers and then choose which other agents to work with. We show there exists an equilibrium in which each agent conditions working with other agents on those agents’ posted prices. Resulting prices can be appreciably higher than the competitive level (for a fixed discount factor), regardless of the number of agents. Thus, brokered markets can remain uncompetitive even with low concentration and easy entry.
- June 2025
- Article
Collusion in Brokered Markets

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Richard Lowery

High commissions in the U.S. residential real estate agency market present a puzzle for economic theory because brokerage is not a concentrated industry. We model brokered markets as a game in which agents post prices for customers and then choose which other agents to work with. We show there exists an equilibrium in which each agent conditions...
- May 2025
- Case
Grand Rounds

By: William A. Sahlman and Lauren Barley
- May 2025
- Case
Grand Rounds

By: William A. Sahlman and Lauren Barley

About the Unit

The Entrepreneurial Management Unit strives to raise the level of academic work in the field of entrepreneurship, in methodological rigor, conceptual depth, and managerial applicability. We also strive to improve the odds of entrepreneurial success for our students and for practitioners worldwide.

Because it is such a complex phenomenon, entrepreneurship must be studied through multiple lenses. We use three.

The process of entrepreneurship - We seek to understand the processes of entrepreneurial activity in start-ups and established firms by examining the antecedents and consequences of various forms of entrepreneurial opportunity identification and opportunity pursuit for individuals, organizations, and industries. We see experimentation and innovation in products, services, processes, and business models as central to entrepreneurial activity.
The finance of entrepreneurship - We seek to understand the financing of entrepreneurial ventures by studying the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurial funding decisions both domestically and internationally.
The context of entrepreneurship - We seek to understand the ways in which entrepreneurs both respond to and shape the context in which they operate, by examining the history of entrepreneurship across time and national borders and by analyzing the legal and cultural contexts for managerial action.

Please also visit the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

Recent Publications

Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar

August 2025 |
Article |
Journal of Financial Economics

Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business revenues declined by 40 percent, largely driven by national factors rather than local infection rates or policies. However, the pass-through of revenue losses to owner consumption was limited: each dollar of revenue loss resulted in only a 1.6-cent decline in consumption. This muted pass-through persisted through 2021, even after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. Our findings suggest that federal subsidies and pandemic-induced reductions in spending opportunities explain the limited impact.

Keywords: Revenue; Small Business; Health Pandemics; Spending; Consumer Behavior

Citation

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Collusion in Brokered Markets

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Richard Lowery

June 2025 |
Article |
Journal of Finance

High commissions in the U.S. residential real estate agency market present a puzzle for economic theory because brokerage is not a concentrated industry. We model brokered markets as a game in which agents post prices for customers and then choose which other agents to work with. We show there exists an equilibrium in which each agent conditions working with other agents on those agents’ posted prices. Resulting prices can be appreciably higher than the competitive level (for a fixed discount factor), regardless of the number of agents. Thus, brokered markets can remain uncompetitive even with low concentration and easy entry.

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Grand Rounds

By: William A. Sahlman and Lauren Barley

May 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

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The Future of the BBC: Public Ownership vs. Privatization

By: Henry McGee

May 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

With viewership of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in decline, the country’s Culture Minister must recommend a new funding model for the venerated public institution which will allow the broadcaster to succeed in an increasingly competitive media environment.

Keywords: Television Entertainment; Cooperative Ownership; State Ownership; Privatization; Public Ownership; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United Kingdom

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Educators

Shifting Work Patterns with Generative AI

By: Eleanor W. Dillon, Sonia Jaffe, Nicole Immorlica and Christopher T. Stanton

Working Paper |
Faculty Research

We present evidence on how generative AI changes the work patterns of knowledge workers using data from a 6-month-long, cross-industry, randomized field experiment. Half of the 7,137 workers in the study received access to a generative AI tool integrated into the applications they already used for emails, document creation, and meetings. We find that access to the AI tool during the first year of its release primarily impacted behaviors that workers could change independently and not behaviors that require coordination to change: workers who used the tool in more than half of the sample weeks spent 3.6 fewer hours, or 31% less time on email each week (intent to treat estimate is 1.3 hours) and completed documents moderately faster, but did not significantly change time spent in meetings.

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Behavior; Time Management

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The Diffusion of New Technologies

By: Aakash Kalyani, Marcela Carvalho, Nicholas Bloom, Tarek Hassan, Josh Lerner and Ahmed Tahoun

May 2025 |
Article |
Quarterly Journal of Economics

We identify phrases associated with novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls, enabling us to identify four stylized facts on the diffusion of jobs relating to new technologies. First, the development of economically impactful new technologies is geographically highly concentrated, more so even than overall patenting: 56% of the most economically impactful technologies come from just two U.S. locations, Silicon Valley and the Northeast Corridor. Second, as the technologies mature and the number of related jobs grows, hiring spreads geographically. But this process is very slow, taking around 50 years to disperse fully. Third, while initial hiring in new technologies is highly skill biased, over time the mean skill level in new positions declines, drawing in an increasing number of lower-skilled workers. Finally, the geographic spread of hiring is slowest for higher-skilled positions, with the locations where new technologies were pioneered remaining the focus for the technology’s high-skill jobs for decades.

Keywords: Technology; Geography; Innovation; R＆D; Technological Innovation; Research and Development; Employment; Geographic Location

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Influencer-led brand building: Hairitage and the McKnights

By: William R. Kerr and James Palano

April 2025 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

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The CHIPS Program Office (Abridged)

By: Mitch Weiss and Sebastian Negron-Reichard

April 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighed signing off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) with at least one unconventional provision: a pre-application (“pre-app”) to the actual application for parts of $39 billion in direct semiconductor manufacturing incentives. The funding had been made available through the U.S. Department of Commerce by the CHIPS and Science Act (“CHIPS”) passed a few months earlier. Her team had also proposed additional measures for the NOFO. They’d added upside sharing provisions to align incentives. They’d included funding milestones so that only awardees making progress would receive additional funds. And they’d drafted a rolling process, so apps didn’t have to be evaluated all at once. Each mechanism, along with the pre-apps, they hoped, would help regain U.S. technological leadership while protecting taxpayer funds. Raimondo would have to decide whether the NOFO as conceived set the stage to do precisely that.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Government Administration; Government Legislation; Motivation and Incentives; Semiconductor Industry; Public Administration Industry; United States

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