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Using a large, longitudinal panel of US start-ups collected between 2004 and 2011, this article shows the extent to which intellectual property (IP) types, for example trademarks, patents, copyrights and outward licensing, enhance multidimensional performance. An ordered probit analysis corrected for sample selection bias, estimates performance to derive the following conclusions. First, trademarks and out-licensing IP types increase a firm’s chances of being a high performer, confirming the importance of certain forms of IP protection for start-ups. Second, patenting significantly reduces the chances of being a high performer, suggesting patenting has limited performance benefits for start-ups. Third, few performance synergies exist in the joint use of IP types, suggesting that strong complementarities among IP types are limited. While out-licensing patents and out-licensing copyrights increase performance, out-licensing patents and out-licensing trademarks diminish it. Furthermore, registering more trademarks and out-licensing more trademarks also diminishes performance, suggesting start-up firms should keep trademarks in-house.

This paper examines differences in the hazard rates of young, established and mature firms during the financial crisis, using microdata from more than 300,000 Irish firms. The findings confirm that firm size at the time of the crisis had the largest impact on the probability of exit. The liability of smallness was pronounced in mature cohorts. Industry conditions had a considerable effect on the hazard rate of young cohorts, as opposed to mature counterparts. Interestingly, agglomeration raised the hazard rates of younger cohorts only. By contrast, attributes of the labour force of the region largely influenced the hazard rates of more established firms. Firms founded before the crisis were significantly less likely to exit in the aftermath of the crisis, in comparison with firms founded just before or during the crisis, whereas more mature firms seem to be more sensitive to the economic cycle.

This paper compares the merits of regional and firm based approaches for analysing the effect of agglomeration economies on firm deaths in Ireland. We aggregate a comprehensive data set on Irish firm deaths to Electoral Division (ED) level, the lowest geographical scale available. Estimates of the effect of agglomeration on firm deaths from a regional analysis at ED level using a cross-sectional spatial-autoregressive spatial error model are compared with firm-level estimates from a contemporary log-log model with spatially weighted agglomeration regressors. While estimates of the effects of agglomeration using these alternative methods is much discussed in existing literature rarely are the approaches or results compared. We show that contrasting results are found using the same data set dependent upon the unit of analysis used. Diversity lowers regional and firm deaths while specialisation raises regional deaths but lowers firm deaths. Greater urbanisation does not have a significant effect on firm hazard rates or equivalent regional estimates. While regional estimates provide evidence on the existence and nature of spatial dependence (negative in this case), firm estimates do not provide evidence that agglomeration in neighbouring regions is the source of this spatial dependence. No empirical analysis to our knowledge directly compares regional and firm based approaches for analysing the effect of spatial agglomeration economies on firm deaths.

This paper develops a real options decision support tool for raising the performance of the firm. It shows how entrepreneurs can use our intuitive tool quickly to assess the nature and type of action required for improved performance. This exploits our estimated econometric relationship between precipitators of entrepreneurial opportunities, time until exercise, and firm performance. Our 3D chromaticity plots show how staging investments, investment time, and firm performance support entrepreneurial decisions to embed, or to expedite, investments. Speedy entrepreneurial action is securely supported with this tool, without expertise in econometric estimation or in formulae for real options valuation. Postprint