Job Market Paper
Matching and Gender Gap in VC Investing
Using rich data on founders’ public resume profiles and a matching approach, I show that female-founded startups raise lower venture capital (VC) financing than similar male-founded companies. However, these differences are eliminated after accounting for sorting of female-founded startups into VCs issuing smaller investment rounds. This sorting is not explained by the clustering of female-founded startups in specific industries, and there is no evidence of bias against founders in female-founded startups. Instead, I show that sorting might stem from investors with a more aggressive investment style maximizing purely financial objectives. Results suggest that these investors add less value to female-founded companies and, therefore, might prefer male-founded startups to maximize the overall portfolio return. These findings shed light on the role of startup-investor matching in the persistence of the gender gap among the most innovative startups.
Publications and Working Papers
The Demand for AI Skills in the Labor Market, Labour Economics
with José Azar (IESE), Mireia Giné (IESE), Sampsa Samila (IESE), and Bledi Taska (Burning Glass)
Using detailed data on skill requirements in online vacancies, we estimate the demand for AI specialists across occupations, sectors, and firms. We document a dramatic increase in the demand for AI skills over 2010-2019 in the U.S. economy across most industries and occupations. The demand is highest in IT occupations, followed by architecture and engineering, scientific, and management occupations. Firms with larger market capitalization, higher cash holdings, and higher investments in R&D have a higher demand for AI skills. We also document a wage premium of 11% for job postings that require AI skills within the same firm and 5% within the same job title. Managerial occupations have the highest wage premium for AI skills. Firms demanding AI skills more intensively also offer higher salaries in non-AI jobs.
AI Adoption and Firm Performance: Management versus IT
with Mireia Giné (IESE), Sampsa Samila (IESE), and Bledi Taska (Burning Glass)
We examine the impact of AI adoption on firm growth, productivity, and investment decisions and explore whether the impact on firm size and policies stems from AI adoption among management ranks or IT specialists. We measure the firm-level AI adoption using the demand for AI-related skills in online job postings. First, we document a positive association between the firm-level AI adoption and the firm's size, Capex, R&D, and total investments. We do not find robust relationships with productivity measures. Second, we find that the adoption of AI skills among managers drives the positive association with growth in sales and market capitalization, as well as with R&D and Capex. AI adoption among IT specialists does not show any robust association with firm outcomes.
From In-person to Online: The New Shape of the VC Industry
with Silvia Dalla Fontana (USI Lugano and Swiss Finance Institute), Caroline Genc (University Paris Dauphine), Hedieh Rashidi Ranjbar (University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business)
Paper on SSRN, Media coverage in PE Findings Issue 19 (by Coller Capital)
Geographical clustering is an essential feature of the venture capital (VC) industry as proximity helps VCs to acquire soft information about early-stage companies and to conduct post-investment activities. However, whether the VC investment model based on in-person interactions is still justified in the age of online communication technologies remains an open question. In this paper, we address this question by using an unexpected interruption in face-to-face meetings during the recent pandemic. We document that VCs respond to this change by breaking their traditional norm: they invest in more distant startups. We find that this evolution goes along with selection criteria and syndication process changes despite some persisting behaviors. Thus, our study helps to understand how VCs revisit their investment model and sheds light on the value of in-person interactions for the VC industry.
Book Chapters
Common Ownership in Fintech Markets
with Jose Azar (IESE) and Anna Tzanaki (Lund University)
Media coverage in Oxford Business Law Blog
We investigate the extent and impact of common ownership in fintech companies. We document a range of empirical facts about common ownership patterns in fintech markets around the world and discuss their implications for competition law enforcement. Specifically, fintech firms are often not publicly listed companies, and the largest owners in this type of firms are venture capital and other types of private equity investors, as opposed to large asset management firms, which are often the largest owners in publicly listed companies. We show that the extent of common ownership is generally low among privately held fintech start-ups. However, it grows substantially with the fintech firms going public. More dynamic and larger fintech markets are characterized by lower levels of common ownership, while smaller national and product markets show substantially higher ownership overlaps. Accordingly, the estimated effects of common ownership in private fintech firms – measured by the lambdas – are higher in the smaller markets. Yet, these are still relatively very low compared to empirically observed common ownership in public fintech firms in oligopolistic markets. Finally, we comment on how the specific ownership and governance structures of fintech firms may materially influence the magnitude and systemic nature of effects associated with common ownership.
Work in Progress
Local Human Capital and Innovation Spillovers
with Miguel Antón (IESE)
We provide empirical evidence on how the sensitivity of firms’ innovation to spillovers generated by peers and rivals varies depending on the characteristics of local human capital. We find that higher concentration of valuable human capital at the company’s location is associated with a stronger positive effect of product market rivals’ R&D on the focal firm’s R&D expenditures. Despite having higher expenditures, firms do not show a corresponding higher R&D output proxied by the number of patents. Competition for ideas seems to motivate firms to invest more in R&D but also makes patenting harder. Additionally, when firms locate in high-density MSAs, a higher educational attainment of local human capital is associated with a more positive effect of technology spillovers on patenting. Such firms seem to patent more because they can exploit technology spillovers more effectively. The paper’s findings are consistent with the view that learning abilities of the skilled human capital play an important role in determining firms’ ability to capture innovation spillovers.
First Prize in XI UAM-ACCENTURE CHAIR 2019 AWARD in Economics and Management of Innovation