Dr. Gresa
Latifi

Venture capital, cultural distance, and start-up acquisitions

(with Benedetta Montanaro, Massimo Colombo and Joachim Henkel)

— Submitted to Strategic Management Journal

We study how the cultural distance between an incumbent firm and a start-up affects the likelihood of an acquisition between them. The existing literature has primarily studied the effects of cultural distance during the post-acquisition phase. However, it may play a crucial role also before an acquisition, by creating information asymmetries for acquirers. We claim that the affiliation with venture capitalists (VCs), as highly selective intermediaries, as well as the VCs' reputations, serve as signals of targets' quality, making acquisitions at large cultural distance more likely to occur. We test our hypotheses on a large sample of VC-backed and non-VC-backed ventures located in the European Union, the UK, and Israel, that were acquired over the period 1998–2018.

The role of skill composition and teams in the online gig economy

(with Özlem Akekmekci, Andrea Herrmann and Anna Nadolska)

— Submitted to Journal of Management

— Accepted at Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2026

— Accepted at DRUID 2026

This study examines how width of skills and unique skill combinations of gig freelancers who form a team rather than operating solo shape performance in the online gig economy. Using data from 9,369 freelancers on a major global platform, we find that both width and uniqueness of skill combinations are positively associated with performance, and these effects are amplified for the freelancers who do operate as a team rather than solo. These findings extend theory of skill economics by demonstrating that both generalists and unique skilled freelancers can be effective in the online gig economy, especially if they operate as a team.

Product-based and Person-based Confidence in Entrepreneurial Fundraising

(with Silvio Vismara and Regan Stevenson)

— Submitted as a pre-registered report to Journal of Business Venturing

Confidence is central to social judgments yet remains underexplored in entrepreneurship. We examine how two forms of confidence cues — directed at the venture (product-based confidence) and at the entrepreneur (person-based confidence) — shape investors' willingness to fund early-stage ventures. Drawing on applied psychology and (para)linguistic research, we conduct two video-based experiments in which AI manipulates vocal cues (speech rate, amplitude) and verbal content to convey varying levels of confidence in entrepreneurial pitches. We hypothesize that both forms of confidence will positively influence willingness to invest, but that product-based confidence will have a stronger effect due to its contextual relevance in uncertain venture environments. Our framework provides a new lens for understanding how confidence cues can influence resource mobilization in entrepreneurial finance.

Industry Influences on Applying for and Obtaining External Equity Finance — Evidence from Greentech Sector

(with Leonard Meinzinger and Andrea Herrmann)

— Accepted for publication at International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal

This study examines the effect of a high-tech venture's industry adherence to the greentech sector on its ability to secure external equity funding. By considering the acquisition of venture capital (VC) as a two-step process, where the search for VC has the characteristics of a censoring event, we show that, despite an elevated likelihood for a venture with green-tech industry adherence to search for VC, the likelihood that it will proceed to obtain funding is decreased. Backed by a theoretical foundation in principal agent and signalling theories, a two-stage Heckman-probit model is used to disentangle between the probabilities of applying and, respectively, obtaining VC funding. This new methodological approach significantly deepens the understanding of industry influences on venture capital acquisition, thus supplying venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from the green sector with much-needed awareness of the practised selection process and how to optimally manoeuvre through its challenges.

Generative AI-powered venture screening: Can large language models help venture capitalists?

(with Silvio Vismara, Leonard Meinzinger and Alexander Pass)

— Published in International Review of Financial Analysis

This paper examines the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance the selection process of venture capitalists (VCs). We employ an LLM agent on a VC database comprising 61,814 early-stage ventures to evaluate the efficiency and categorization quality of the venture screening process. Our findings indicate that LLM agents outperform humans, operating 537 times faster than a human VC analyst without sacrificing categorization quality. Specifically, the LLM agent performs comparably to a human analyst in forming distinct clusters (as indicated by Silhouette scores of 0.35 and 0.37, respectively) while exceeding human performance in cluster separation and compactness, as evidenced by a 70% increase in the Calinski-Harabasz Index. These results suggest a transformative shift in VC practices, highlighting the potential of LLMs as tools for structuring and organizing deal flow.

Does writing a business plan still matter for searching and obtaining external equity finance?

(with Luca Grilli and Andrea Herrmann)

— Published in Venture Capital Journal

This study analyses the importance of business plans for founders and professional equity investors in the process of acquiring venture capital. How do the founders' efforts spent on writing a business plan relate to obtaining the equity funding asked for? Based on a sample of 301 nascent ventures, we first ran a two-step selection model. This quantitative analysis shows that, while a founder's effort to write a business plan positively correlates with the likelihood of the founding team seeking external financing, business plans are no longer a determining factor for actually obtaining external equity funding. Through additional qualitative analysis, we shed light on this finding and point to other tools venture capitalists increasingly use to forecast venture performance, thereby substituting business plans as core documents of venture assessment. Our study thus contributes to a better understanding of new matching tools between entrepreneurs and investors, thereby adding new knowledge to entrepreneurship scholars and policy-makers alike.

Institutional determinants of Venture Capital Activity: An empirically driven literature review and a research agenda

(with Luca Grilli and Boris Mrkajic)

— Published in Journal of Economic Surveys

Venture Capital (VC) was born and has flourished in the United States, yet it has only modestly developed in other geographical areas. A vast body of research has been carried out to investigate the factors which are conducive to VC activity, and that may better explain the differences in the degree of development and performance of VC industry across different geographical contexts. However, there has only been a limited effort in the literature to systematize what we know (and what we do not know) about the institutional factors that spur VC activity. This paper tries to close that gap, through a systematic survey of the existing literature on the institutional and related determinants of VC activity. Grounding on the seminal work of North (1990), we consider formal (e.g. laws and formal rules) and informal (e.g. cultural norms and tacit codes of behaviour) institutions which are found in the extant empirical economics and management literature to affect the development of the VC industry. Building on this careful review, our paper aims to propose interesting avenues for future research in this domain.

Venture capital in Europe: social capital, formal institutions and mediation effects

(with Luca Grilli and Boris Mrkajic)

— Published in Small Business Economics

Venture capital (VC) as an industry has existed for more than 50 years, yet it has only moderately developed beyond the USA despite numerous trials of governments to foster it. Vast research endeavors have been carried out to understand the antecedents, barriers, and facilitators of the industry. However, the focus has been rather limited and accounted almost exclusively for formal features of institutional environments, leaving the informal dimensions unexplored. This paper tries to close that gap. Based on longitudinal country-level data on 18 European countries, we first explore if the "usual suspects," mostly embodied in reformable formal institutions, do play a role in the European context. We also investigate if informal institutions, and in particular social capital, may exert a prominent effect. In this respect, we found that the impact of social capital on VC activity is indeed indirect, through determining those structural formal institutions which in turn significantly affect VC activity. These findings contribute to the literature on VC and inform European policy makers on the most promising channels for creating a prosperous institutional environment for the financing of innovative start-ups.

Scientific Cooperation in a German Polish Border Region in the Light of EU Enlargement

(with Jutta Günther, Judyta Lubacha-Sember and Daniel Töbelmann)

— Published in Foresight and STI Governance

This paper evaluates the economic advantages and disadvantages of the Eastern expansion of the European Union for old and new EU member states, and introduces support programmes which aim to integrate regions on both sides of the border. It focuses especially on the development of cross-border scientific cooperation between Germany and Poland. An empirical study on the example of the Europa University Viadrina (EUV), a newly founded university in the German-Polish border region, shows the extent of German-Polish cooperation based on co-publication activity. In our small-scale empirical investigation for the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics of the EUV, we identified quite a number of co-publications between EUV staff and Polish colleagues. Most of them take place within the EUV, and many relate to cooperative work with scientific entities in both Poland and Germany. The entire intensity and frequency of cooperative scientific activities is, however, much broader than the publication analysis shows and offers scope for further integration with possible positive spillovers for the economic development as well.

A Reform Strategy for Germany

(with M. Sanders, M. Stenkula, M. Fritsch, A. Herrmann, B. Pager, L. Szerb, E. Terragno Bogliaccini & M. Wyrwich)

In: Mark Sanders, Axel Marx & Mikael Stenkula (eds.), The Entrepreneurial Society: A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK, Springer, 2020

In this chapter, we outline a reform strategy to promote a more entrepreneurial society in Germany. Germany has developed a successful model of capitalism in which high productivity growth is driven by on-the-job learning and firm-specific skill accumulation. The economy is rooted in a strong and regionally embedded Mittelstand, which supports an export-oriented industry mainly based on incremental innovations, but which is less conducive to more radical innovation. We therefore suggest a reform agenda for Germany that encourages more entrepreneurial experimentation with the aim of facilitating radical innovation, both in incumbent and new firms. Germany's entrepreneurial talent should be encouraged to take on more risk, the education system could promote initiative, creativity and a willingness to experiment, and a more equal playing field between dependent employment and self-employment/employer could be created.

A Reform Strategy for Italy

(with M. Sanders, M. Stenkula, A. Herrmann, B. Pager, L. Szerb & E. Terragno Bogliaccini)

In: Mark Sanders, Axel Marx & Mikael Stenkula (eds.), The Entrepreneurial Society: A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK, Springer, 2020

In this chapter, we outline a reform strategy to promote an entrepreneurial society in Italy. From a Varieties-of-Capitalism perspective, Italy has been classified as a Mixed or Mediterranean Market Economy. It boasts a vibrant entrepreneurial economy of locally embedded, often family-owned small- and medium-sized firms that make up a major share of its economy. The main bottlenecks in the Italian entrepreneurial ecosystem are low ambition levels, the lack of skills and education flowing into entrepreneurial ventures, and a bureaucratically encumbered, non-meritocratic, business environment that feeds back into a low familiarity with ambitious entrepreneurship. Italy could strengthen its entrepreneurial ecosystem in several areas, ranging from boosting human capital investments to reducing the clientelism in the business environment and recruitment culture. This would open up more opportunities for the young and talented, eager to engage in productive and innovative venturing in Italy.

Scientific Cooperation in a German-Polish Border Region in the Light of EU Enlargement

(with J. Guenther, J. Lubacha-Sember and D. Toebelmann)

In: Meissener, D., E. Edil and Chataway, J. (eds.), Innovation and the Entrepreneurial University, Springer, 2018

FIRES — Reform Strategy for Germany

(with M. Sanders, P. Balasz, L. Grilli, A. Herrmann, B. Pager, L. Szerb & E. Terragno Bogliaccini)

FIRES Report, D5.12 + Policy Brief on the FIRES-reform strategy for Germany, April 2018

In this policy brief we outline a draft FIRES-reform strategy to promote an Entrepreneurial Society in Germany. The reforms proposed are derived from a seven-step process in which the academic work and stakeholder engagement activities of the FIRES-project come together. This seven step process was applied to the case of Germany in a report and this brief summarizes its findings. This brief is one of three, where the other briefs address the United Kingdom and Italy.

FIRES — Reform Strategy for Italy

(with M. Sanders, M. Fritsch, A. Herrmann, B. Pager, L. Szerb & E. Terragno Bogliaccini)

FIRES Report, D5.12 + Policy Brief on the FIRES-reform strategy for Italy, April 2018

In this policy brief we outline a draft FIRES-reform strategy to promote an Entrepreneurial Society in Italy. The reforms proposed are derived from a seven-step process in which the academic work and stakeholder engagement activities of the FIRES-project come together. This seven step process was applied to the case of Italy in a report and this brief summarizes its findings. Italy was selected to be representative for a Mediterranean and so called mixed market economy. This brief is one of three, where the other briefs address the United Kingdom and Germany.

FIRES — Policy Brief on Venture Capital in Europe

(with Luca Grilli and Boris Mrkajic)

FIRES Policy Brief, D2.3, November 2017

We argue why the venture capital industry, as one of the critical channels for funding innovative entrepreneurial ventures, has failed to fully develop in the European Union and propose ways forward. Based on longitudinal country-level data on 18 European countries, we provide a comprehensive test of VC determinants including reformable formal institutions (investor protection laws, taxation regulations, labour market regulations), structural formal institutions (rule of law, government effectiveness), and informal institutions (social capital). We find that social capital, deeply embedded and diverse across EU countries, has significantly shaped the VC industry. These findings suggest EU governments face a profound challenge when trying to foster VC activity, as social structures — rooted and difficult to alter — are not supportive. We recommend vertical tax incentives targeting equity investors and promising innovative startups as the most viable short-term policy levers.

The circular economy – An opportunity that allows us to live together

In: Vezgishir, M., Containporary: The Kosovo Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale (forthcoming)

From the frying pan into the fire: The economic, political, and social realities of ethnic Kosovo Albanian entrepreneurs during the 1990s

In: Hoxha, E., The CITYisEVERYWHERE: The Kosovo Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale