How Entrepreneurial Experience Foster Crises Resilience: Survival and Performance of New Ventures and Incumbents

This paper estimates the relationship between entrepreneurial human capital (EHC) of employees in new firms and incumbents and their resilience to major global crises using individual and firm level data for 1997-2016. EHC is measured as employees' previous experience being entrepreneurs. We use longitudinal register data for Sweden covering the IT-crisis 2001-2003 and the Great Recession 2008-2009. The results show that having employees with an entrepreneurial background decreases the probability of exiting especially for the new ventures, albeit the effect differs between these two crises. We elaborate with alternative measures of EHC, distribute it on occupational function, educational level and the reason for employees quitting their previous entrepreneurial endeavors (closures, mergers and acquisitions). In addition, we implement three different estimation techniques. Our results remain robust to all these alterations. Besides providing new empirical insights, we argue that our findings are of theoretical interest as well as having practical and policy implications.