Profile

Download Academic Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Visitors to this page might also be interested in my job market applications page, job market paper page, research papers page, research statement page (which contains summaries of some of my research papers), projects page (which details work that is not yet ready for submission to peer-reviewed journals), and teaching statement page.

Edward J. Egan

Ed Egan is a candidate for Assistant Professor positions in the fields of Strategy, Business Economics, and Corporate Finance on the 2013/2014 academic job market. He will be available for interview during or following the 2014 Annual Meeting of American Economics Association, between January 3rd and 7th in Philadelphia. He is also available by phone or email.

Currently the Innovation Policy Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research under Professors Scott Stern and Josh Lerner, Ed completed his Ph.D. in business administration, with a dual focus on strategy & business economics (in the BPP group) and finance at the Haas School of Business, U.C. Berkeley, in May of 2012, under the supervision of Professors David Teece, Toby Stuart, Michael Katz, and Bronwyn Hall. Ed then spent the 2012/2013 academic year as a post-doctoral fellow at the Sauder School of Business, U.B.C., under his long-term mentors Jim Brander and Thomas Hellmann.

Ed's research areas are the financing of entrepreneurship and the economics of innovation. His work consists primarily in the application of industrial organization economics and corporate finance to entrepreneurship and business strategy. Ed's specialty is the use of micro-data in large scale empirical analysis, however, his work also often contains useful theoretical innovation.

An Academic Curriculum Vitae for Ed Egan is available in pdf format.

Job Market Paper

Ed's job market paper, How Start-up Firms Innovate, proposes a `system vs. components' theory of innovation to understand the relationship between inventive activity and commercialization investment choices for patent-holding high-technology start-up firms. He tests the theory using cross-sectional analyses and a difference-in-difference analysis on near-population data of patent-holding start-up firms that secured either an initial public offering or an acquisition between 1986 and 2004. The theory requires that entrepreneurs maximize their expected profits given both the available technological opportunity and the state of technology in their industry. Start-up firms should specialize to pit their strengths against incumbents' weaknesses or generalize to best incumbents on every dimension. Moreover, policy that affects commercialization investment choices should also affect research and development choices, and vice versa. Ed shows that following the introduction of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which raised the costs of an initial public offering, start-up firms preferred to specialize in component-based invention rather than developing competitive systems.

Contact Information

Dr. Edward J. Egan
Innovation Policy Fellow
National Bureau of Economic Research
Office 401, 1050 Massachusetts Av., Cambridge, MA, 02138
Cell: 617 487-1325
Office: 617 588-1401
Fax: 617 868-2742
Email: ed@edegan.com

Education

BSc (Hons), Physics, University College London
MSc, Business Administration, University of British Columbia
PhD, Business Administration, University of California Berkeley

Positions Held

2013 - present, Innovation Policy Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research
2012 - 2013, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Sauder School of Business, UBC
2005 - 2006, Sessional Lecturer, Sauder School of Business, UBC

Current Research and Interests

• Economics of technological innovation and intellectual property rights
• Financing of entrepreneurship: Venture capital, Angel investment, subsidization of entrepreneurship
• Strategic management in high-technology firms
• Determinants of value in initial public offerings and acquisitions of start-up firms
• Policy concerning innovation and entrepreneurship

Selected Papers

• Egan, Edward J. (2013), How Start-up Firms Innovate: Technology Strategy, Commercialization Strategy, and their Relationship, Job Market Paper. (wikipage,pdf)
• Egan, Edward J. (2013), Venture Capitalists as Vendors of Complementary Components, Job Market Companion Paper. (wikipage)
• Brander, James A. and Edward J. Egan (2013), Investor Expectations and the Role of Venture Capitalists in Acquisitions, University of British Columbia, Working Paper. Proceedings of the Annual Conference, Administrative Science Association of Canada, Banff, Alberta (June ‘06).(wikipage, pdf)
• Egan, Edward J. and David J. Teece (2013), Patent Thickets: Taxonomy, Theory, Tests, and Policy, U.C. Berkeley Working Paper. (wikipage,pdf)
• Brander, James A., Edward J. Egan and Louisa Yeung (2013), Estimating the Effects of Age on NHL Player Performance, Revise and resubmit to the Journal of Quantitative Analysis of Sports (wikipage, pdf)
• Brander, James A., Edward J. Egan, and Thomas F. Hellmann (2010), Government Sponsored versus Private Venture Capital: Canadian Evidence, in "International Differences In Entrepreneurship", J. Lerner and A. Schoar, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. (wikipage,pdf )

Teaching

• MBA 201A - Economic Analysis for Business Decisions
• COMM 394 - Government and Business
• COMM437 - Database Technology

Honors and Awards

• C.U.S. Teaching Excellence Award Nominee, Sauder School of Business, UBC - 2012
• Henry K. Hayase Award, PhD Program, Haas School of Business - 2012
• Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellow, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation - 2012
• Earl F. Cheit Outstanding G.S.I. Award, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley - 2010
• Canadian Graduate Scholar, Government of Canada - 2008
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellow, Government of Canada - 2008

References and Advisors

Primary Referees:

• Scott Stern, Sloan (MIT), sstern@mit.edu, 617 253-3053
• Thomas F. Hellmann, Sauder (UBC), hellmann@sauder.ubc.ca, 604 822-8476
• David J. Teece, Haas (U.C. Berkeley), teece@haas.berkeley.edu, 510 642-1075

IP Fellow Supervisors (NBER):

• Scott Stern, Sloan (MIT), sstern@mit.edu, 617 253-3053
• Josh Lerner, HBS, josh@hbs.edu, 617 495-6065

Post-doctoral Fellow Supervisors (UBC):

• Thomas F. Hellmann, Sauder (UBC), hellmann@sauder.ubc.ca, 604 822-8476
• James A. Brander, Sauder (UBC), brander@sauder.ubc.ca, 604 822-8483

Ph.D. Committee (Haas School of Business, U.C. Berkeley):

• David J. Teece, Haas (U.C. Berkeley), teece@haas.berkeley.edu, 510 642-1075
• Toby E. Stuart, Haas (U.C. Berkeley), tstuart@haas.berkeley.edu, 510 643-7671
• Michael L. Katz, Haas (U.C. Berkeley), katz@haas.berkeley.edu, 510 643-0661
• Bronwyn H. Hall, U.C. Berkeley, bhhall@econ.berkeley.edu, 510 642-0822

Orals Committee and other doctoral advisors (Haas School of Business, U.C. Berkeley):

• David Mowery, Haas (U.C. Berkeley), mowery@haas.berkeley.edu, 510 643-9992
• Suzanne Scotchmer, Professor of Economics, Law and Public Policy (U.C. Berkeley), scotch@berkeley.edu, 510 643-8562
• Steve Tadelis, Haas (U.C. Berkeley), stadelis@haas.berkeley.edu, 510 643-0546