Brent Goldfarb Directory Page
Brent Goldfarb
Dean’s Professor of Entrepreneurship
Academic Director, Dingman Center
Ph.D. Economics, Stanford University
Goldfarb received a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in economics and computer science from Tel Aviv University. Goldfarb’s recent projects include a book on bubbles and crashes in new technology industries, with a focus on how narrative impacts entrepreneurial investment and beliefs, a study of how team composition affects entrepreneurial outcomes, and the documentation of gender and racial disparities in student entrepreneurship. Goldfarb also works at the intersection of empirical methods and the Philosophy of Science to develop solutions to the reliability crisis in science.
In recent years, Goldfarb has developed a “Real Entrepreneurship” course structure where students run real businesses, is a co-founder of a deep tech startup, and is the Academic Director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. Goldfarb is affiliated with the Entrepreneurship Research Lab at the University of Wisconsin. Professor Goldfarb’s research bridges the areas of entrepreneurship, economics, strategy, management, and finance.
News
Research
Insights
Bubbles and Crashes
The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation
Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch
Eckhardt, Jonathan T., Clint Harris, Chuan Chen, Bekhzod Khoshimov and Brent Goldfarb. Student Migration and Student Entrepreneurship. (2021) Journal of Regional Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2021.1987408 .
Moran Lazar, Ella Miron-Spektor, Gilad Chen, Brent Goldfarb, Mia Erez, Rajshree Agrawal. “ Forming New Venture Teams: The Benefits of Mixing Business and Relationships ” (2021) Academy of Management Journal . https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.0393
Brent Goldfarb and Liyue Yan. “ Revisiting Zuckerman's (1999) Categorical Imperative: An Application of Epistemic Maps for Replication ”. (2021) Strategic Management Journal ( Appendix ): 42(11): 1963-1992. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3290 , Code and data .
Andrew A. King, Brent Goldfarb, and Timothy S. Simcoe “ Learning from Testimony on Quantitative Research in Management ” (2021) Academy of Management Review. 46(3):1-23. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2018.0421 .
Evan Starr and Brent Goldfarb. “A Binned Scatterplot Is Worth a Hundred Regressions: Diffusing a Simple Tool to Make Empirical Research Easier and Better”, (2020) Strategic Management Journal 41(12):2261-2274. . https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3199 . (Final working paper copy ).
Lazar, Moran, Ella Miron-Spektor, Rajshree Agarwal, Miriam Erez, Brent Goldfarb, and Gilad Chen. “ Entrepreneurial Team Formation. ” (2020) Academy of Management Annals 14 (1): 29–59.
Sandeep Devanatha Pillai, Brent Goldfarb, and David Kirsch, “ The Origins of Firm Strategy: Learning by Economic Experimentation and Strategic Pivots in the Early Automobile Industry ”. (2020) Strategic Management Journal. 41(3): 369-399.
Corredoira, Rafael A., Brent Goldfarb, and Yuan Shi. “ Federal Funding and the Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity .” (2018) Research Policy 49(9): 1777–1800.
Goldfarb, Brent, Anastasiya Zavyalova, and Sandeep Pillai. " Did Victories in Certification Contests Affect the Survival of Organizations in the American Automobile Industry during 1895–1912? A Replication Study. " (2018) Strategic Management Journal 39(8): 2335-2361.
Best Paper Prize honorable mention, Strategic Management Society annual meeting, Berlin, 2016.
Goldfarb, Brent, Andrew A. King, and Timothy S. Simcoe. “Heritability of Trust and Distrust Remains Unknown.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 10 (March 6, 2018): E2149–50, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1719745115 .
Brent Goldfarb., David Kirsch, and Dave Kressler, “Business exercise starts with $5 in seed money.” Entrepreneurship & Innovation Exchange (2018). https://eiexchange.com/content/312-business-exercise-starts-with-5-in-seed-money
Brent Goldfarb and Andrew King, “ Scientific Apophenia in Strategic Management Research: Significance Tests and Mistaken Inference .” (2016), Strategic Management Journal 37(1): 167-176.
Goldfarb, Brent, David Kirsch, and Dave Kressler. "The Real Entrepreneurship Competition." Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange (2016) https://eiexchange.com/content/211-the-real-entrepreneurship-competition
Recent Research
From Hypothesis Testing Towards Inference to Best Explanation: A PEEBI Testimonial Structure for Abductive Studies in Strategy
Strategic Management Journal
Though scholars employ abduction, there is no agreed-upon structure to reporting their findings. Moreover, the traditional hypo-deductive reasoning structure does not align with the epistemology of abduction. We propose an abductive testimonial structure, termed PEEBI, which consists of five sections in which the authors take prior knowledge and theories, establish the context and observations that are worthy of interest, identify and evaluate candidate explanations for the observed patterns, determine the best explanation and their reasoning for accepting it, and abstract the best explanation to a more generalizable theoretical contribution. Consistent with abductive epistemology, PEEBI advances knowledge in a modest, stepwise fashion. PEEBI foregrounds transparency and communication of the author's judgment and elevates the role of the readers by giving them information to better make judgments.
Sandeep Devanatha Pillai (Tulane), Brent Goldfarb, David A. Kirsch, Evan Starr, and Seojin Kim (Drexel)