Compound or Offset: Do Immigrant Workers Enjoy Compensation Advantages in New Ventures?
With Francesco Castellaneta and Diego Zunino
The entrepreneurship and immigration literatures respectively highlighted notable penalties for native workers in new ventures and immigrants in established firms. In this paper, we explore whether these penalties compound for immigrants in new ventures. Using a matched employer-employee dataset from Portugal, we find that the wage penalty for new venture employees is significantly attenuated for immigrants. Our findings suggest that these results stem from both demand-side (immigrants bring value and are therefore compensated) and supply-side (immigrants demand higher wages for the risk of organizational mortality) factors. These results highlight that new ventures offer more equitable opportunities for immigrants, and shed light on a more nuanced perspective to compensation dynamic in the entrepreneurial labor market. They have implication for entrepreneurs, hiring managers, and policy makers.
Job Market Paper
Academy of Management 2025 Best Paper Proceedings
In preparation for submission
When is Startup Employment Attractive to Technical Job Seekers? Evidence From Online Experiments
With Diego Zunino and Daniel P. Forbes
Working for a newly founded organization often requires people to take on unusual sets of responsibilities. While doing so can represent a learning opportunity for startup employees, this multiplicity of roles can lead prospective workers to negatively assess the employing organizations. In this paper, we explore how technically-trained job seekers evaluate startups’ employment opportunities. Drawing on human capital theory, we identify role multiplicity as a salient feature of job evaluation in the early recruitment phase. We hypothesize that tech-trained job seekers will be less attracted to jobs featuring higher levels of role multiplicity. We further propose that this effect will be stronger for startups than for established organizations. We test these hypotheses through two pre-registered online framed field experiments in the context of the online labor market. Our results help illuminate how job seekers evaluate startup jobs early in the recruitment process. In doing so, they shed light on the nuanced challenges startups face in attracting different types of human capital and suggest implications for managers seeking to attract workers.
In preparation for submission
Remote Work: A Path to Flexibility or a Barrier to Mobility?
Extended abstract available upon request
Data collection (experiment)
Stepping Stone or Stumbling Block: How Does Past Entrepreneurial Failure Shape the Type of Human Capital Attracted in New Venture?
With Vera Rocha and Diego Zunino
Extended abstract available upon request
Writing Stage
How Does Organizational Form Affect the Aggregation of Risk Preferences from Individual to Organizational Level?
With Thorsten Wahle, Thorbjørn Knudsen, and Jerry Guo
Abstract available upon request
Experimental design
Unlocking Organizational Attractiveness: How Do Flexible Work Arrangements Shape Jobseekers Evaluation?
With Diego Zunino
Abstract available upon request
Data analysis