LAEF Seminar: Salomé Baslandze, Atlanta Fed

Speaker

Salomé Baslandze, Atlanta Federal

Biography

Salomé Baslandze is a research fellow and associate adviser on the macroeconomics and monetary policy team in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a research affiliate at Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Her major fields of study are innovation, firm dynamics, growth, and entrepreneurship.

Title

"Born Different: Entrepreneurship through Inventor Mobility, Innovation, and Growth" (joint with Ia Vardishvili)

Abstract

Large productivity differences across firms reflect substantial ex-ante heterogeneity at entry, yet the origins of this heterogeneity remain poorly understood. This paper shows that innovating spinouts—firms formed by inventors leaving incumbent innovators—are a key endogenous source of high-growth entrepreneurship and aggregate productivity growth. Using inventor mobility in patent data, we document that spinouts systematically outperform other entrants through-out their life cycle, their performance is strongly linked to parent-firm technological strength, and their formation temporarily depresses parent-firm innovation. We develop a Schumpeterian growth model that endogenizes spinout formation and the fundamental tradeoff between knowledge diffusion, creative destruction, and appropriability. Closely disciplined by rich micro-level data, the model implies that spinouts account for a disproportionate share of high-growth firms and nearly forty percent of aggregate productivity growth, but that inventor departures also impose sizable costs on incumbents, generating a fundamental policy tradeoff. Policy counterfactuals show that relaxing non-compete restrictions raises aggregate growth and welfare and amplifies the effectiveness of entry subsidies.