Valentina A. Assenova

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Pennsylvania

Research Summary We evaluate the role of cultural tightness–looseness as an explanation for cross‐cultural variation in new firm formation rates. Modeling cultural tightness–looseness as an antecedent for individual entrepreneurial dispositions and informal institutions, we examine its impact on the number of new limited‐liability companies registe...

Research Summary Accelerator programs provide valuable market feedback and education to participants that may improve startup performance. However, it is unclear whether the average effect of accelerator participation on startup performance post acceleration is positive, and if so, how this effect varies with accelerator program design. We analyze...

The literature on institutional voids examines how intermediaries, such as business groups and business incubators, address such voids in emerging economies. However, it remains unclear whether and how digital multisided platforms fill these voids given their unique features. This study focuses on mobile money platforms, which allow users without b...

Absorptive capacity–the ability to learn and apply external knowledge and information to acquire material resources–is an essential but overlooked driver in community adaptation to new and unprecedented disasters. We analyzed data from a representative random sample of 603 individuals from 25 coastal communities in Louisiana affected by the Deepwat...

Nations must curtail carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 7% per annum to meet the Paris Agreement temperature targets. A perceived economic growth-climate mitigation trade-off has diminished political will to act. However, there is no scholarly consensus regarding the magnitude of the trade-off between economic growth and CO2 mitigation and a lack of...

Existing research at the nexus of institutional theory and entrepreneurship suggests that lowering institutional barriers to forming, growing, and exiting new firms can affect the types of start-ups that entrepreneurs found in a region. These institutional changes could influence entrepreneurs’ perceptions of the value of partnering with venture ac...

Socially and educationally disadvantaged entrepreneurs often lack the knowledge and prior experience to develop and scale their businesses. Owing to limited educational and employment opportunities, poverty, and discrimination, these entrepreneurs frequently experience low business growth and performance. What factors influence the effectiveness of...

This study applies and extends the methodology developed by Guzman and Stern (2015) to estimate the quality of entrepreneurship in India, using government census data for the universe of 1,542,555 registered companies with known founding dates, spanning all 29 states in India. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to quantify and ch...

Prior research on the empirical relationship between anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and economic growth, as measured by increases in gross domestic product (GDP), indicate that a 1% growth in GDP can lead to anything between an increase in emissions by 2.5% to a decline by 0.3%. Studies have paid little attention to independent mechan...

Complex innovations– ideas, practices, and technologies that hold uncertain benefits for potential adopters—often vary in their ability to diffuse in different communities over time. To explain why, I develop a model of innovation adoption in which agents engage in naïve (DeGroot) learning about the value of an innovation within their social networ...

Entrepreneurs in many emerging economies start their firms informally, without registering with the state.We examine howinformality at the time of founding affected the performance of 12,146 firms in 18 countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings indicate that entrepreneurs who registered their firms at founding enjoyed greater success in ter...

European settler mortality has been proposed as an instrument to predict the causal effect of colonial institutions on differences in economic development. We examine the relationship between mortality, temperature, and economic development in former European colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We find that (i) European settler mortality ra...

Dyadic data are common in the social sciences, although inference for such settings involves accounting for a complex clustering structure. Many analyses in the social sciences fail to account for the fact that multiple dyads share a member, and that errors are thus likely correlated across these dyads. We propose a non-parametric, sandwich-type ro...

Crowdfunding (CF) platforms, such as Kickstarter (KS), offer a means of funding innovation, connecting inventors and entrepreneurs with a multitude of supporters, who each provide a small fraction of the amount required to fund the project. Although considerable funding for innovation has historically come from venture capitalists (VCs), the entrep...

A group of experts discuss their thoughts about the current state of crowdfunding, its future, important emerging trends in the field, and the opportunities and challenges facing investors and entrepreneurs in the space. Across the board, these experts highlight the importance of crowdfunding as a means for mobilizing resources. They also maintain...

The history of formal organizations begins earlier, but reached a critical juncture in sixteenth century Europe, where an innovative, if not entirely new, mode of social organization was widely adopted as a means to pursue long-distance overseas trade. Groups of individuals – men in company with one another – joined together to coordinate their act...

We explore the relationship between whether firms begin as formal or informal organizations and the subsequent growth and performance of those firms in 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We find that being formal, being registered, at the time of founding contributed to both higher sales and greater employment in 17 of the 18 countries. Our result...

Changes in organizations' performance evaluations place greater pressure on decoupled organizations to sustain myths of improvement based on ceremonial criteria of worth. I develop hierarchical and relational models to explain the variability in reported performance metrics among schools in California's public school system over the period 1999-201...

Why has physical piracy of music grown globally in recent years despite international efforts to reduce the problem? This research employs cross-country time series data analysis to examine physical music piracy rates across developed and developing economies. We provide 1999-2004 cross-country evidence from 70 countries that mean global music pira...

Of life-size height, with crossed hands on her lap, she watched me calmly and intensely, aware of her beauty and immeasurable power. Behind her, in bright hues glowed flowers and fruit. The woman appeared as if she herself was born of their gleam, but at the same time she does not merge with it, her image does not get lost in its light. She disting...