From employee to entrepreneur: Learning, employer size, and spinout dynamics

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Most new firms are founded by former employees of existing firms – spinouts. This paper explores how existing firms shape the entry and post-entry dynamics of spinouts and studies the aggregate implications of this relationship. Using micro-data from Mexico, I show that employees from small firms are more likely to form spinouts than employees of large firms. In addition, spinouts from large employers start at a larger scale and grow faster than spinouts from small employers. To reconcile these patterns, I develop a model of occupational choice and firm dynamics in which employees can learn from their employers. Using a calibrated version of the model, I analyze the implications of the link between employer size and spinout dynamics for macroeconomic outcomes within and across economies. I argue that learning efficiency – interpreted as management quality – is not only salient for understanding cross-country differences in spinout entry but also variation in the firm size distribution and output per worker. I also show that employee learning has meaningful and long-lasting implications for the creation of new firms and for workers in response to policies that target existing firms. Taken together, this paper establishes a connection between incumbent and entrant firms and shows that it is important for aggregate outcomes.