Funded Research Proposals

One-third of venture capital in Europe comes from government agencies. We study how government-backed VC, intermediated through private funds, affects firm and market outcomes. Matching EIF portfolio data to firm outcomes, we find that government financing boosts firm growth, especially when targeting young companies, and attracts private co-investment rather than crowding it out. Current policy, ...Read More

This project studies how prior work experience shapes who becomes an entrepreneur, when they found companies, and how successful those ventures become. Focusing on first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants, and native-born workers in the US, the study compares careers that begin in large technology firms with those that start in early-stage startups. Using employment histories from ...Read More

Xufei Liu, PhD Candidate in Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School; Gad Allon, Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School; Ken Moon, Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School Abstract: Long-term memory is key to deeper learning, yet students differ drastically in how they acquire and retain knowledge. Current education platforms offer individualized practice at ...Read More

The “value chain smile” posits that firms capture the most value at the upstream (R&D/design) and downstream (marketing/customer-facing) ends of the supply chain, yet empirical evidence remains mixed. We argue that this ambiguity arises because existing studies rely on globally anchored, industry-level measures of upstreamness that obscure firm-specific supply network structure. This project proposes to ...Read More

In algorithmic decision-making, it is often mathematically impossible to satisfy competing definitions of fairness simultaneously. This impossibility makes assessing stakeholders’ fairness preferences a challenging but crucial exercise. To address this, the researchers developed an interactive tool to elicit fairness preferences by projecting the complex decision space into a simple one-dimensional choice: setting risk thresholds. This ...Read More

Routing mechanisms are crucial for efficiently matching specialized resources to customer needs at the lowest cost. Improving allocation to these specialized resources, then, is of first-order concern for many organizations. But when human decision-makers are tasked with allocation in a complex environment, it can be challenging to understand their decision processes and design systems that ...Read More

The advance of AI is rapidly increasing cybersecurity vulnerabilties and the risks that organizations face. While working with non-exploiting hackers is recognized as key to strengthening cybersecurity, we still lack a clear understanding of the challenges and dynamics that impact whether such partnerships succeed or breakdown. In this project we aim to identify when, why, ...Read More

The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) presents firms with an important choice between using these new technologies for short-term optimization (monitoring) or long-term adaptation (innovation). This study examines how corporate ownership structures influence AI implementation patterns. We argue that governance systems that emphasize optimization and rigorous performance metrics may inadvertently trigger the “exploitation trap,” ...Read More

Entrepreneurial firms operate in environments characterized by rapid technological change, shifting demand, and heightened uncertainty. While prior research has identified factors associated with startup growth and survival, much of this work relies on static, ex post measures and offers limited insight into how firms adapt strategically in real time. This project proposes artificial intelligence as ...Read More

Prior authorization (PA) is widely used to manage utilization of high-cost health services, yet it imposes administrative burdens and can delay care. As generative AI is increasingly deployed to automate both the submission of prior authorization requests by providers and authorization decisions by insurers, raising questions about the effectiveness of gatekeeping as a utilization management ...Read More