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Dissertations in Entrepreneurship: Seeking More Scholars

With less than a week away from the deadline for the 2016 Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship, Growthology highlights some of the great work from dissertations completed this year by previous fellows.

Written by Alex Krause

With less than a week away from the deadline for the 2016 Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship, Growthology highlights some of the great work from dissertations completed this year by previous fellows.

The Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program (KDFP) is an annual competitive program that awards Dissertation Fellowship grants to Ph.D., D.B.A., or other doctoral students at accredited U.S. universities to support dissertations in the area of entrepreneurship and innovation.

During the past decade, the Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship has introduced the Kauffman Foundation to almost 200 outstanding young scholars in entrepreneurship and innovation.

1. Mabel Abraham

Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management, now assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School

Understanding the Conditions of Bias: Essays on Gender Differences in Evaluation Outcomes Across Three Empirical Contexts

Mabel has contributed exceptional research to the field of women’s entrepreneurship. In her dissertation, Mabel focuses on uncovering conditions under which gender differences in evaluation outcomes exist and underlying mechanisms driving observed gender differences. She seeks to contribute to our understanding of how evaluative mechanisms perpetuate gender inequality.

2. Bo Cowgill

Ph.D. from University of California – Berkeley, Haas School of Business, now assistant professor at Columbia University

Essays on the Economics of Organizations, Productivity, and Labor

Bo’s work in organizations, productivity and labor has further developed the study of how firms use incentives and information in personnel and management practices related to hiring and innovation. He does so by looking at competition between workers and inside firms and how social networks are used in hiring. He also studies referred and non-referred employee productivity as well as the betting markets inside of firms.  

3. Sebastian Dyrda

Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, now assistant professor in economics at the University of Toronto

Fluctuations in Uncertainty, Efficient Borrowing Constraints and Firm Dynamics

Sebastian Dyrda is the first of our 2015 Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship class to complete his dissertation. Sebastian’s work is on the importance of microeconomic uncertainty shocks for the firm dynamics over the business cycle in economy with frictional financial markets.

4. Jamie McCasland

Ph.D. from the University of California – Berkeley, now assistant professor of economics at the University of British Columbia

Essays in Development Economics: Lessons from an Apprentice Placement Program in Ghana

Jamie’s dissertation is on development in Ghana. Her research has a focus on labor markets and firms, by which she seeks to answer the question: do apprentices alleviate firms’ labor constraints? In her research, she studies an unusual scenario in which a sample of apprentices was directly selected for a program by government officials alongside an entire pool of applicants eligible for the program. She will be presenting at the upcoming Kauffman/IZA Workshop on Entrepreneurship in Washington, DC.

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