Entrepreneurship and Information on Past Failures: A Natural Experiment

Abstract

We analyze how public information on past entrepreneurial failure affects entrepreneurs’ ability to borrow. We exploit a policy shock from 2013 in France, which eliminated a highly salient public reporting to banks of managers involved in non-fraudulent corporate liquidations. We find that the flag removal makes failed entrepreneurs significantly more likely to restart a business or to borrow from a surviving business, despite the fact that bankers can find the failure information from other public sources for a small cost. Restarters create companies that have a higher probability of default.