After a long  silence I finally found my way back here again – I have been finishing my dissertation on “Entrepreneurial Exit” which will be defenced in May at the Stockholm School of Economics. The dissertation is published by The Economic Research Institute and can be bought in softcover there or downloaded ( for free as a pdf. file.

Ironically enough, the topic of my dissertation has attracted many questions from people in the recent months, given the sad state of the economy. A main finding in my research is that there is a rather weak, or more correctly speaking a non-linear relationship between economic profitability and entrepreneurial exit, with exit frequently occuring both among well-performning and poorly performing firms.

A practical conclusion of this is that while much effort and resources are spent by policy makers trying to the attractiveness of entrepreneurship as a career choice – for example by lowering the tax rate for new firms – there is comparatively little policy attention directed at the exit side of entrepreneurship.  One wonder why economic policy focus so little on stimulating the rapid exit of unprofitable firms and lowering the risk of (uneccessary) exit of profitable businesses due to (temporary) financial turmoil?

In the Swedish banking crisis during the early 1990s, many small businesses – even highly profitable ones – were forced to exit because of the sudden rigidity of credit terms which put a stranglehold on their liquidity. It is important for authorities not to let this happen again in times of financial turmoil.

Boye-Dohle, Passion and Neuroentrepreneurship

Today I’m juggling some notes from last week’s Summer School in Entrepreneurship at the Max Planck Institute of Economics. Among the interesting presentations, Melissa Cardon was speaking about entrepreneurial passion, Arvids Ziedonis held an in-depth discussion about the development of University-Industry relationships in the United States and in particular the role of innovations and patents following the Baye-Dohle act in 1980. Norris Krueger talked about the emerging research strand of “neuroeconomics” and “neuroentrepreneurship” (is it the future or simply a fad? – I remain undecided). In all, it was a splendid week with lots of interesting conversations, good food, and inspiring speakers.