Research

How do formal and informal institutions interact to shape who takes part in entrepreneurship? In the first chapter of my dissertation, we examine Sistema de Apertura Rápida de Empresas (SARE), a reform in Mexico that drastically reduced the time and procedures needed to register a business. Motivated by the mixed results of prior research on entry barrier policies, we ask why such reforms often fail to benefit underrepresented groups like women. Using SARE’s staggered rollout as a quasi-experiment, we find that while the policy significantly increased entrepreneurship among men, it had no effect on women starting businesses. Instead, it led to a rise in unpaid labor among women supporting male relatives’ new ventures. Through extensive robustness checks and mechanism tests, including an experimental vignette study, we show how gender norms—such as cognitive beliefs about who is a capable entrepreneur and normative social expectations about who should be an entrepreneur—can undermine the effectiveness of these policies, widening gender gaps rather than closing them

Coverage: Henrich Greve's Blog  Post,  Inside SC Johnson

How do changing norms about race and gender shape organizational practices? Polarization in America has surged, profoundly affecting society—from election outcomes to protests on college campuses. Yet, many of its societal impacts remain underexplored. In this study, we examine how American firms’ hiring practices shifted after the murder of George Floyd, which brought racial equality issues to the forefront of public debate. Focusing on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) positions, we analyze LinkedIn profiles of employees at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 firms and observe a sharp increase in DEI-specific hiring after Floyd's murder. We further investigate the firm-level heterogeneity driving this trend by matching employee political donation data to create a firm-level ideology measure. Before Floyd's murder, liberal and conservative firms had similar levels of DEI-related hiring. However, following the event, liberal firms significantly increased DEI hiring, while conservative firms showed only minimal changes.