Daehyun Kim, Ph.D.

Artikel in referierten Fachzeitschriften

Kim, Daehyun; Kim, Namil; Park, Haemin Dennis (2025). Anti-Labor Environments and Employee Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Right-to-Work Laws, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2025, forthcoming. DOI

• We explore how changes in labor unions and related labor environments affect employees' likelihood of starting a new business. We suggest that the enactment of stringent anti-union laws reduces incentives for employees to stay with their respective workplaces and increases the attractiveness of becoming self-employed. Using the adoption of right-to-work (RTW) laws in Michigan and Indiana as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that the likelihood of employees becoming self-employed increased by 53% compared with that of states without RTW laws. Moreover, this tendency is more pronounced for blue-collar and low-wage workers who start unincorporated businesses. These findings offer novel insights on the relationship between anti-labor environments and necessity-driven entrepreneurship by focusing on individual-level incentives in non-knowledge-intensive sectors.
• Also published in: Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings Vol. 2023, No. 1

Kim, Daehyun; Kim, Taekyun; Kim, Wonjoon; Youn, Hyejin (2025). When Automation Hits Jobs: Entrepreneurship as an Alternative Career Path, PLOS ONE 2025. DOI

• This study investigates the relationship between occupational automation risks and workers’ transitions to entrepreneurship using data from the Current Population Survey. We find that employees facing automation-related job displacement are inclined to shift toward unincorporated entrepreneurship, emphasizing entrepreneurship as a viable alternative career path. Noteworthy variations emerge when examining specific automation technologies, revealing a positive association between industrial robots and entrepreneurial transitions, whereas artificial intelligence displays a negative relationship. Gender disparities are observed, with female workers exhibiting a lower likelihood than males of transitioning into entrepreneurship. This study also shows a heightened prominence of entrepreneurial transitions during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. By illuminating entrepreneurship as a response to job displacement, our results offer crucial policy insights into the labor market implications of automation.

Kim, Daehyun (2025). How Digital Platforms Affect Local Entrepreneurial Activities: Evidence From the Staggered Entry of Craigslist, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2025, forthcoming. DOI

• Access to markets is critical for entrepreneurial success, yet many face significant barriers. This study argues that digital platforms functioning as peer-to-peer marketplaces can facilitate entrepreneurial activity by improving market access for new ventures. Using the staggered entry of Craigslist into various markets, we find that Craigslist's entry increased local entrepreneurial activities, especially in low-income regions. Moreover, individuals from lower-income households, as well as Black and immigrant communities, were more likely to create new ventures following Craigslist's entry. Firms founded after Craigslist's entry were also smaller in size, potentially reflecting more efficient management, and primarily operated in B2C rather than B2B sectors. This study highlights how multisided platforms can empower individuals with limited market access and resources, ultimately democratizing entrepreneurship in the digital age.

Kim, Daehyun; Kim, Namil; Park, Haemin Dennis (2023). Anti-Labor Environments and Employee Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Right-To-Work Laws, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2023 (1), 2023 (1)1722abstract. DOI

• We explore how changes in labor union and related labor environments affect employees’ likelihood of starting a new business. Using Michigan’s and Indiana’s adoption of right-to-work (RTW) laws as a natural experiment, we demonstrate that the likelihood of employees becoming self-employed increased by 50% as compared to that in states without RTW laws following the passage of the law. However, this tendency is more pronounced for less-educated and blue-collar workers. Moreover, newly created-firms are mostly small businesses with limited scalability. These findings offer novel insights on the relationship between anti-labor environments and employee entrepreneurship.
• Forthcoming in: Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Han, Jeongbong; Kim, Daehyun; Kim, Wonjoon; Cho, Sunghyun (2023). Are Researchers More Likely to Succeed When They Start a Technology-Based Startup?, Applied Economics Letters 2023, 1-5. DOI

• This study investigates the relationship between a founder’s occupational background and the survival rate of technology-based startups, focusing on founders with prior research positions. Utilizing a unique tech-based startup database, the study discovers that startups founded by researchers exhibit a lower survival rate compared to those led by founders with other backgrounds. Nevertheless, prior entrepreneurial experience positively moderates the relationship between a founder’s research experience and startup survival rate, indicating that practical business knowledge can offset the inherent lack of business expertise in a researcher’s background. Moreover, the study reveals that startups established by researchers from large companies have an even lower survival rate, as specialization within large organizations may impede the acquisition of essential management skills. These findings emphasize the importance of developing a diverse skill set for startup success.

Kim, Daehyun; Kim, Namil; Kim, Wonjoon (2018). The Effect of Patent Protection on Firms' Market Value: The Case of the Renewable Energy Sector, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 82 (3), 4309-4319. DOI

• In the renewable energy industry, technology development requires a large initial investment by firms and takes a long time. Thus, protecting patents in this industry has become an increasingly important issue in maintaining a company's value. In this study, we examine how patent protection affects firms’ market value by analyzing the listed companies in South Korea in the renewable energy sector over a 35-year period (from 1980 to 2014). We find that simple patent counts are not a strong measure for explaining a firm's financial success in this industry, whereas indices that represent a firm's ability to protect patents (backward citation and patent family) positively and significantly affect the firm's market value. This study suggests that patent protection is an important factor for companies in improving their economic value in the renewable energy sector.

Beiträge in Sammelwerken

Kim, Daehyun; Kim, Taekyun; Kim, Wonjoon (2022). Resilience and Ingenuity: Global Innovation Responses to Covid-19, in: Carsten Fink et al. (Hg.), (2022). Resilience and Ingenuity: Global Innovation Responses to Covid-19, 109-117. London: CEPR Press.

• https://cepr.org/chapters/covid-19-crisis-or-opportunity-case-south-korean-innovation

Diskussionspapiere

Kim, Daehyun; Park, Haemin Dennis; Deng, Shu (2025). Technological Uniqueness and Venture Capital Investments, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 25-18.

• We explore how the technological uniqueness of startups influences their likelihood of securing venture capital (VC) funding and the conditions under which such a relationship varies. Using a textbased approach that maps startups in the technology space, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between technological uniqueness and the probability of receiving first-round VC funding. Startups with moderate uniqueness are more likely to receive investment, whereas those with very low or very high uniqueness are less likely to be funded. This pattern, however, varies with the degree of startup-VC alignment, captured by the technological and industry similarity between startups and VC portfolios. Greater alignment reduces the perceived risks of highly unique technologies, shifting the peak of the inverted U-shaped relationship toward higher uniqueness, thereby making startups with greater uniqueness more likely to receive funding. These findings suggest a familiarization mechanism whereby familiarity with related technologies or industries helps VCs interpret and assess novelty more effectively and mitigate the uncertainty surrounding unique startups. Our study contributes to research on optimal distinctiveness and entrepreneurial resource acquisition by highlighting the role of investor-side characteristics in shaping how technological uniqueness is evaluated. It also offers a new text-based approach for measuring startups' technological positioning, providing a useful tool for future work on innovation and early-stage funding.
• Available at SSRN

Heller, David; Kim, Daehyun; Harhoff, Dietmar (2025). Startup Accelerators and International Market Entry: Evidence from the German Accelerator Program, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 25-17. DOI

• While internationalization efforts can help startups overcome barriers to growth, entering foreign markets remains a significant challenge. Accelerator programs play an important role in supporting startups' scaling ambitions by offering in-depth entrepreneurial learning opportunities. In this study, we examine whether and how such programs can facilitate startup internationalization. To this end, we leverage a unique dataset that combines proprietary application data from the German Accelerator (GA)-a government-financed program designed to support startups' international market entry-with detailed startup-level, founder, and investment information. We find that participating startups significantly raised funding and hired more employees in the GA's target countries relative to a comparison group of startups that were admitted, but did not attend for exogenous reasons. Consistent with our theoretical considerations about an experiential learning mechanism, these effects are muted for startups that took part in online programs that were introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the results are strongest among startups with limited international experience prior to participating. We further support these mechanisms with qualitative evidence from surveying GA alumni. Our study advances the understanding of the potential and limitations of startup accelerators in supporting international market entry, a key strategy for many entrepreneurial ventures today.

Kim, Daehyun; Paik, Yongwook; Deng, Shu (2025). Employee-Friendly but Costly Workplace Practices? Evidence from Paid Family Leave Policies and Venture Capital Investments, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 25-13.

• This study investigates how paid family leave (PFL) policies—an institutional intervention—affect venture capital (VC) investment in VC-backed startups. Leveraging the staggered implementation of PFL across U.S. states, we find that their introduction is associated with a decline in VC investment, particularly among startups with a higher proportion of female employees. This effect appears to be driven by increased employee departures and reduced innovation, suggesting that workforce disruptions induced by PFL impose organizational burdens that weaken startup performance and ultimately deter investor interest. Our findings contribute to strategy and entrepreneurship research by demonstrating how institutional shocks can destabilize human capital advantages, which are both critical and fragile in early-stage firms, and by highlighting the boundary conditions of these advantages under institutional constraints.
• Available at SSRN