Kauffman Foundation Announces 2009 Young Scholars Program Recipients

Awards Presented at the 2009 ASSA Annual Meeting
KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(Business Wire)--
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announced today the 2009 recipients of the
Kauffman Young Scholars Program. This program recognizes the achievements of
three sets of young scholars who are making significant contributions to
research in entrepreneurship. The awards were presented at the Allied Social
Science Associations` annual meeting in San Francisco, Calif. on Jan. 3, 2009.

"Our funding of young scholars initiatives supports the Foundation`s goal of
promoting and advancing the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation," said
Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation. "By assisting
talented young scholars in their research efforts, we encourage the very best
and brightest to focus their careers on entrepreneurship."

The Kauffman Foundation funds a series of programs and initiatives designed to
promote entrepreneurship as a legitimate field of academic study. The programs
assist talented young scholars in their efforts to earn doctoral degrees,
encourage scholars to conduct research early in their careers and recognize
ground-breaking research-all with a focus on entrepreneurship. The Foundation`s
Young Scholars Program supports and recognizes achievements at each career level
of an academic professional.

Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship

As a tribute to Ewing Marion Kauffman and his entrepreneurial work, the Kauffman
Foundation established the Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished
Research in Entrepreneurship in 2005 to inspire promising young scholars to
contribute new insight into the field of entrepreneurship. The Medal, which
includes a $50,000 cash prize, is awarded every two years to one scholar under
age 40, whose research has made a significant contribution to the literature in
entrepreneurship.

The 2009 recipient, Antoinette Schoar, Ph.D., is the Michael M. Koerner
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Sloan School of Management. An expert in corporate finance,
entrepreneurship and organizational economics, Schoar researches venture
capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate diversification and governance and
capital budgeting decisions in firms. She received the Fellowship of the George
Stigler Center, 1997-1999, and the ERP Doctoral Scholarship of the German
Ministry of Trade, 1995-1997. Schoar received her doctorate in economics from
the University of Chicago. She has previously served as assistant professor in
finance at the Sloan School of Management at MIT and as a visiting professor at
the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business.

Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research

The inaugural Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research
recognizes five tenured or tenure-track junior faculty members whose research
will contribute to the body of literature in entrepreneurship. The fellowships,
in the amount of $50,000 each, will be awarded to each Fellow`s university to
support the research activities of the Fellow. More information regarding
Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowships can be found at www.kauffman.org/kjff.

The 2009 fellowship recipients, along with their university affiliations are:

* Aaron K. Chatterji, Duke University
* Waverly W. Ding, University of California, Berkeley
* Gerson Dushnitsky, University of Pennsylvania
* Jon Eckhardt, University of Wisconsin-Madison
* Andrew J. Nelson, University of Oregon

Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program

The Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program recognizes fifteen exceptional
doctoral students and their universities. Fifteen fellowships in the amount of
$20,000 each will be awarded to the students to support their dissertation
research in the area of entrepreneurship. Including the current class of
fellows, 93 awards have been made since the program was created in 2002. More
information on the Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program can be found at
www.kauffman.org/kdfp.

The 2009 fellowship recipients, along with their university affiliations and the
titles of their dissertations, are:

* Javed I. Ahmed, University of California, Berkeley
"Venture Capital Fund Formation: The Effects of Limited Partner Monitoring on
Capital Availability for Entrepreneurs"
* Nachiket Bhawe, University of Minnesota
"Prior Knowledge, Opportunity Recognition, and the Variability of
Entrepreneurial Firms"
* Meg Blume-Kohout, Pardee RAND Graduate School
"Assessing the Impact of Federal R&D Funding on Pharmaceutical Innovation"
* Ian Michael Breunig, Colorado State University
"The Effects of Health on Transitions to Entrepreneurship"
* Gharad Bryan, Yale University
"The Impact of Risk Sharing on the Adoption of New Technologies"
* Emily Cox, Stanford University
"What Type of Investor is Best? Funding Innovation in Young Firms"
* Martin Ganco, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"The Influence of Modularity and Overlap of Technology on Employee
Entrepreneurship: Three Essays"
* Deepak Hegde, University of California, Berkeley
"Bargaining Power in Markets for Technology: Evidence from Licensing Data"
* Shon R. Hiatt, Cornell University
"The Influence of Heterogeneous Institutional Actors on New Venture Foundings,
Technological Variation, and Survival in the U.S. Biodiesel Industry"
* Mingfeng Lin, University of Maryland
"Borrowing from Strangers: An Empirical Investigation of Online Peer-to-Peer
Lending for Entrepreneurs"
* Kathleen Marker, University of California, San Diego
"The Role of Religion and Ethnicity in Business Networking: A Study of Arab
American Entrepreneurs"
* Jason M. O'Connor, Northwestern University
"Endogenous Technological Competition: The Impact of Open Science and Market
Size on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Agricultural Biotechnology"
* Lori Santikian, Harvard University
"Dissecting Bank Lending to Small Businesses: The Role of Connections and
Cross-Selling in Credit Allocation"

* Edward Smith, University of Chicago
"Organizational Identity and Survival in the Hedge Fund Industry"
* Margarita Tsoutsoura, Columbia University
"Inheritance Tax Law and Inter-Generational Family Entrepreneurship: Evidence
From a Natural Experiment"

About the Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private nonpartisan foundation that
works to harness the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to grow economies
and improve human welfare. Through its research and other initiatives, the
Kauffman Foundation aims to open young people's eyes to the possibility of
entrepreneurship, promote entrepreneurship education, raise awareness of
entrepreneurship-friendly policies, and find alternative pathways for the
commercialization of new knowledge and technologies. It also works to prepare
students to be innovators, entrepreneurs and skilled workers in the 21st century
economy through initiatives designed to improve learning in math, engineering,
science and technology. Founded by late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing
Marion Kauffman, the Foundation is based in Kansas City, Mo. and has
approximately $2 billion in assets.

Kauffman Foundation
Barbara Pruitt, 816-932-1288
bpruitt@kauffman.org

Copyright Business Wire 2009