Research

Manuscripts Under Review

current

1. How Digital Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces Affect Local Entrepreneurial Activities: Evidence from the Staggered Entry of Craigslist

   Daehyun Kim, Yongwook Paik*, and Namil Kim*

   Conditionally accepted, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

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   The emergence of prominent digital platforms impacts the way we organize economic activities, including how one starts a new business. In this paper, we examine how a prominent digital platform might affect entrepreneurial activities. We argue that popular digital platforms that serve as a peer-to-peer digital marketplace such as Craigslist can lower barriers to entrepreneurship by reducing resource acquisition costs and customer acquisition costs when starting new businesses, resulting in increased entrepreneurial activities. Exploiting the staggered entry of Craigslist into various U.S. markets with a difference-in-differences econometrics approach, we find causal evidence that the entry of Craigslist increased local entrepreneurial activity, especially in low-income regions and for business-to-consumer businesses. Our study highlights the unintentional spillover effect of a digital platform in empowering potential entrepreneurs.

2. Anti-Labor Environments and Employee Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Right-To-Work Laws

   Daehyun Kim, Namil Kim*, and Haemin Dennis Park

   Revise and resubmit, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

   Abs

   We explore how changes in labor union and related labor environments affect employees’ likelihood of starting a new business. Using Michigan’s and Indiana’s adoption of right-to-work (RTW) laws as a natural experiment, we demonstrate that the likelihood of employees becoming self-employed increased by 54.6% as compared to that in states without RTW laws following the passage of the law. However, this tendency is more pronounced for less-educated and blue-collar workers. Moreover, newly created-firms are mostly small businesses with limited scalability. These findings offer novel insights on the relationship between anti-labor environments and employee entrepreneurship.

3. When Jobs Automate: Entrepreneurship as an Alternative Career Path

   Daehyun Kim, Taekyun Kim*, Wonjoon Kim, and Hyejin Youn

   Under review

   Abs

   The paper explores the association between workers in occupations at risk of automation and their inclination towards entrepreneurship, particularly in its unincorporated form, as a reaction to changes in the labor market driven by robotics and AI. Through analysis of data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Automation Probability Index (API), it uncovers a significant link between heightened automation risks and the propensity to start smaller, less innovative entrepreneurial endeavors. The study further sheds light on gender differences in these trends, noting a lesser propensity for female workers to turn to entrepreneurship when faced with the prospect of automation. Moreover, the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in intensifying this movement towards entrepreneurship is recognized, coinciding with a surge in automation technology adoption during this period. This research enhances understanding of the impact of automation on career choices, underlining the need for policy initiatives to assist individuals transitioning from conventional employment to entrepreneurship in an economy increasingly influenced by automation.

4. How Does Publicly Available Knowledge Affect Interfirm Hiring?

   Shu Deng, Haemin Dennis Park*, and Daehyun Kim

   Under review

   Abs

   Increased availability of public knowledge may diminish the necessity of hiring inventors for codified knowledge, but it may heighten the demand for inventors with tacit knowledge to utilize public knowledge. By using the enactment of the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA) as a shock that increased publicly available knowledge through mandated patent disclosure, we find that firms with greater exposure to AIPA hire fewer inventors who possess less complex knowledge while hiring more inventors who possess highly complex knowledge. Further analyses reveal that both the substitution and complementation effects are less pronounced for firms with highly novel technological portfolios, whereas they are more pronounced for firms with greater technological capability.

5. How Does A New Venture’s Technological Uniqueness Influence Venture Capital Funding Outcomes?”

   Daehyun Kim, Haemin Dennis Park*, and Shu Deng

   Under review

   Abs

   We explore how technological uniqueness affects a new venture’s ability to raise venture capital (VC) funding. Although some level of technological uniqueness is expected for new ventures entering a market or technological domain, excessive uniqueness can make a venture appear risky and less attractive to investors. We thus expect an inverted U-shaped relationship between technological uniqueness and first-round VC funding amount. However, as the investment community becomes more familiar with a venture’s unique technologies, the optimal uniqueness point shifts to the right for the second funding round. This effect is particularly strong for those ventures that received first round of funding from highly reputable VC firms.

6. Unpacking the Entrepreneurial Process after Failure: The Role of Attribution and Behavioral Responses in Technology-Based Startups

   Daehyun Kim, Wonjoon Kim*, Haejun Jung, Aaron Chatterji, and Sunghyun Cho

   Under review

   Abs

   This paper investigates the relationship between the attribution of the cause of prior entrepreneurial failure and subsequent entrepreneurial processes, with a focus on technology-based startups. Drawing on social psychology literature on attribution theory and research on learning from failure, the study finds that failed entrepreneurs with prior financing experience are more likely to attribute internal factors as the causes of their business failure, reducing their likelihood of re-entering entrepreneurial activities after a failure. Furthermore, the study shows that serial entrepreneurs who attribute their previous failure to internal factors are more likely to change their business model or technology in subsequent startups. Lastly, the research reveals that entrepreneurs who change their business model or technology after a previous startup failure have a higher probability of receiving private investment than startups founded by entrepreneurs who do not make these changes. Overall, the research provides a comprehensive understanding of the behavioral processes of failed entrepreneurs and contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship.

Manuscripts Under Development

Correct authoring will be determined later

current

1. Empowering to Scale Global: Evidence from the German Accelerator Program

   David Heller, Dietmar Harhoff, and Daehyun Kim
2. Employee Welfare and Startup Growth: Evidence from Paid Family Leave Policy and Venture Capital Funding

   Daehyun Kim, Yongwook Paik*, and Shu Deng

Published and Forthcoming Articles

2023

1. Are researchers more likely to succeed when they start a technology-based startup?

   Jeoungbong Han, Daehyun Kim*, Wonjoon Kim, and Cho Sunghyun

   Applied Economics Letters, 2023

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   This study investigates the relationship between a founder’s occupational background and the survival rate of technology-based startups, focusing on founders with prior research positions. Utilizing a unique tech-based startup database, the study discovers that startups founded by researchers exhibit a lower survival rate compared to those led by founders with other backgrounds. Nevertheless, prior entrepreneurial experience positively moderates the relationship between a founder’s research experience and startup survival rate, indicating that practical business knowledge can offset the inherent lack of business expertise in a researcher’s background. Moreover, the study reveals that startups established by researchers from large companies have an even lower survival rate, as specialization within large organizations may impede the acquisition of essential management skills. These findings emphasize the importance of developing a diverse skill set for startup success.

2018

1. The effect of patent protection on firms’ market value: the case of the renewable energy sector

   Daehyun Kim, Namil Kim, and Wonjoon Kim*

   Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2018

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   In the renewable energy industry, technology development requires a large initial investment by firms and takes a long time. Thus, protecting patents in this industry has become an increasingly important issue in maintaining a company’s value. In this study, we examine how patent protection affects firms’ market value by analyzing the listed companies in South Korea in the renewable energy sector over a 35-year period (from 1980 to 2014). We find that simple patent counts are not a strong measure for explaining a firm’s financial success in this industry, whereas indices that represent a firm’s ability to protect patents (backward citation and patent family) positively and significantly affect the firm’s market value. This study suggests that patent protection is an important factor for companies in improving their economic value in the renewable energy sector.