William R. Kerr
There are 16 articles for this faculty member.
Labor Regulations and European Private Equity
| Authors: | Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 27, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Recent theoretical models predict that countries with stricter labor policies will specialize in less innovative activities due to the higher worker turnover frequently associated with rapidly changing sectors. HBS visiting scholar Ant Bozkaya and HBS professor William R. Kerr examine how differences in labor regulations across European countries influence the development of private equity markets, comprised of venture capital and buy-out investors. In so doing, the researchers provide the first empirical evidence for this theoretical prediction at the industry level in the entrepreneurial finance literature. They also make a methodological contribution by demonstrating how jointly modeling the different policies for providing worker insurance delivers more consistent results than their individual relationships would indicate by themselves.
Published in 2009
Clusters of Entrepreneurship
| Authors: | Edward L. Glaeser, William R. Kerr, and Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 8, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Economic growth is highly correlated with an abundance of small, entrepreneurial firms. This relationship is even stronger looking across industries within cities, and has been taken as evidence for competition spurring technological progress, product cycles where growth is faster at earlier stages, and the importance of entrepreneurship for area success. Any of these interpretations is possible, however, and the only thing that we can be sure of is that entrepreneurial clusters exist in some areas but not in others. This paper first documents systematically some basic facts about average establishment size and new employment growth through entrepreneurship, then analyzes entry and industrial structures at the region and the city levels using the Longitudinal Business Database.
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
| Author: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 30, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In just a short period of time the spatial location of invention can shift substantially. The San Francisco Bay Area grew from 5 percent of U.S. domestic patents in 1975-1984 to over 12 percent in 1995-2004, for example, while the share for New York City declined from 12 percent to 7 percent. Smaller cities like Austin, Texas, and Boise, Idaho, seem to have become clusters of innovation overnight. Despite the prevalence of these movements, we know very little about what drives spatial adjustments in U.S. invention, the speed at which these reallocations occur, and their economic consequences. In this paper, HBS professor William R. Kerr investigates whether breakthrough inventions draw subsequent research efforts for a technology to a local area. Evidence strongly supports the conclusion that centers of breakthrough innovations experience subsequent growth in innovation relative to their peer locations.
Financing Constraints and Entrepreneurship
| Authors: | William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 11, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Financing constraints are one of the biggest concerns impacting potential entrepreneurs around the world. Given the important role that entrepreneurship is believed to play in the process of economic growth, alleviating financing constraints for would-be entrepreneurs is also an important goal for policymakers worldwide. In this paper HBS professors William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda review two major streams of research examining the relevance of financing constraints for entrepreneurship. They then introduce a framework that provides a unified perspective on these research streams, thereby highlighting some important areas for future research and policy analysis in entrepreneurial finance.
Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints and Firm Entry Size
| Authors: | William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 11, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2009 (revised October 2009) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How do financing constraints on new start-ups affect the initial size of these new firms? Since bank debt comprises the majority of U.S. firm borrowings, new ventures are especially sensitive to local bank conditions due to their limited options for external finance. Liberalization in the banking sector can thus have important effects on entrepreneurship in product markets. As HBS professors William Kerr and Ramana Nanda explain, the 1970s through the mid-1990s was a period of significant liberalization in the ability of banks to establish branches and to expand across state borders, either through new branches or through acquisitions. Using a database of annual employment data for every U.S. establishment from 1976 onward, Kerr and Nanda examine how U.S. branch banking deregulations impacted the entry size of new start-ups in the non-financial sector. This paper is closely related to their prior work examining how the deregulations impacted the rates of startup entry and exit in the non-financial sector.
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and US Ethnic Invention
| Authors: | William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 21, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The H-1B visa program governs most admissions of temporary immigrants into the U.S. for employment in patenting-related fields. This program has become a point of significant controversy in the public debate over immigration, with proponents and detractors at odds over how important H-1B admission levels are for U.S. technology advancement and whether native U.S. workers are being displaced by immigrants. In this study, Kerr and Lincoln quantify the impact of changes in H-1B admission levels on the pace and character of U.S. invention over the 1995-2006 period.
Published in 2008
Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?
| Authors: | Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | December 4, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Some places, like Silicon Valley, seem almost magically entrepreneurial with a new start-up on every street corner. Other areas, like declining cities of the Rust Belt, appear equally starved of whatever local attributes make entrepreneurship more likely. Many academics, policymakers, and business leaders stress the importance of local conditions for explaining spatial differences in entrepreneurship and economic development. This paper uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau to characterize these entry relationships more precisely within the manufacturing sector.
Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey
| Authors: | Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 23, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
International migration is a mighty force globally. According to United Nations statistics, over 175 million people, accounting for 3 percent of the world's population, live permanently outside their countries of birth. This paper surveys the economic impacts of immigration for host countries, mostly emphasizing the recent experiences of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. The paper documents how migrant flows to some countries within this region are now of similar magnitude to the United States. The authors discuss the impact of immigration on national labor markets in terms of both immigrant assimilation and possible native displacement. Their survey concludes with the impact of immigration on the public finances of host countries, which is of particular policy importance within Europe today given ageing populations and fiscal imbalances.
The Agglomeration of U.S. Ethnic Inventors
| Author: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 14, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The higher concentration of immigrants in certain cities and occupations has long been noted. There has been very little theoretical or empirical work to date, however, on the particular agglomeration of U.S. immigrant scientists and engineers. This scarcity is disappointing given the scale of these ethnic contributions and the importance of innovation to regional economic growth. William R. Kerr's study contributes to our empirical understanding of agglomeration and innovation by documenting patterns in the city-level agglomeration of ethnic inventors (e.g., Chinese, Indian) within the United States from 1975 through 2007. It is hoped that the empirical platform developed in this study provides a foothold for furthering such analyses.
Published in 2007
The Changing Face of American Innovation
| Q&A with: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 5, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Chinese and Indian scientists and engineers have made an unexpectedly large contribution to U.S. technology formation over the last 30 years, according to new research by HBS professor William R. Kerr. But that trend may be ebbing, with potentially harmful effects on future growth in American innovation.
The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors
| Author: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 12, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The contributions of immigrants to U.S. technology formation are staggering. While the foreign-born account for just over 10 percent of the U.S. working population, they represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and nearly 50 percent of those with doctorates. Even looking within the Ph.D. level, ethnic researchers make an exceptional contribution to science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citation counts, and so on. The magnitude of these ethnic contributions raises many research and policy questions: 4 examples are debates regarding the appropriate quota for H1-B temporary visas, the possible crowding out of native students from the science and engineering fields, the brain-drain or brain-circulation effect on sending countries, and the future prospects for U.S. technology leadership. This paper describes a new approach for quantifying the ethnic composition of U.S. inventors with previously unavailable detail.
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
| Authors: | Glenn Ellison, Edward L. Glaeser, and William Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 23, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Most industries exhibit some degree of geographic concentration. Although many theories attempt to explain this agglomeration, empirical tests of these theories are difficult as they all predict similar outcomes within individual industries. This study considers how industries coagglomerate—that is, which industry pairs locate together—to form a tractable analysis. The authors specifically study the relative importance of proximity to suppliers and customers, to firms using similar labor, and the sharing of ideas for explaining agglomeration.
Do Employment Protections Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States
| Authors: | David H. Autor, William R. Kerr and Adriana D. Kugler |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 2, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Business leaders and policymakers often claim labor market rigidities reduce productivity and competitiveness by altering production choices from their unconstrained best. These theories are tested using the adoption of employment protection regulations by U.S. state courts over the last three decades. Consistent evidence is found following the introduction of the employment regulations that 1) firm production choices are altered, 2) firm employment turnover declines, and 3) firm productivity declines. Entrepreneurship rates also decline in the states after the court decisions. The interpretation of the results, however, is somewhat clouded by very large employment growth that follows the regulations too.
The Immigrant Technologist: Studying Technology Transfer with China
| Q&A with: | William R. Kerr and Michael J. Roberts |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 22, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Immigrants account for almost half of Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers in the U.S., and are prime drivers of technology development. Increasingly, however, Chinese technologists and entrepreneurs are returning home rather than staying in the U.S. to pursue opportunities. Professor William Kerr discusses the phenomena of technology transfer and implications for U.S.-based businesses and policymakers. From New Business.
Banking Deregulation, Financing Constraints and Entrepreneurship
| Authors: | William Kerr and Ramana Nanda |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 3, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
What effect does an increase in banking competition have on the entry of start-ups? In particular, does an increase in banking competition have a differential effect on the entry of start-ups relative to the opening of new establishments by existing firms? The U.S. branch banking deregulations provide a useful laboratory for studying how banking competition affects small businesses. Prior to 1970, all but twelve states had stringent restrictions on the ability of banks to open new branches or to acquire the branches of other banks within the state; beginning in the 1970s and until 1994, all but two states removed these restrictions. In this research, Kerr and Nanda studied the entry of newly incorporated businesses between 1976 and 1999 using detailed data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Their findings matter for understanding how reforms that affect the financing environment may improve the real economy through the reallocation of resources in the non-financial sectors.
Published in 2006
The Industry R&D Survey: Patent Database Link Project
| Authors: | William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu |
|---|---|
| Published: | December 8, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The development and diffusion of new innovations are central to economic growth, and understanding the firm-level underpinnings of technology progress is important to academics, policymakers, and business managers. While many researchers have examined (either separately or together) corporate research and development and technology diffusion, they run into two significant data constraints. William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu describe how they developed a new dataset for studying corporate innovation that encompasses three important existing datasets. This paper summarizes the Industry R&D Survey for researchers who want to study innovation through the Census Bureau's data.
