Research Experience as Human Capital in New Business Outcomes

Nathan Goldschlag, Ron Jarmin, Julia Lane, Nikolas Zolas

Chapter in NBER book Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century (2021), Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, Javier Miranda, and Daniel Sichel, organizers
Conference held March 10–11, 2017
Published in April 2021 by University of Chicago Press
© 2021 by the National Bureau of Economic Research
in NBER Book Series Studies in Income and Wealth

Human capital is typically cited as an important contributor to the survival, growth and innovative activity of new businesses. This paper contributes to the literature by both developing novel measures of human capital and examining the link between those measures and the outcomes of young firms. It builds on several strands of the literature which emphasize the importance of employee workplace experience as a dimension of human capital. It shows that the effects of work experience differ substantially by where an employee worked and is valued differently by firms in different sectors. This is particularly true for research experience, which is consistent with the notion that on the job training in complex tasks should be valuable to firms with complex production technologies.

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

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