C. Fisch

"Impact investors pursue both financial and social goals and have become an important source of funding for social enterprises. Our study assesses impact investor criteria when screening social enterprises. Applying an experimental conjoint analysis to a sample of 179 impact investors, we find that the three most important criteria are the authenticity of the founding team, the importance of the societal problem targeted by the venture, and the venture's financial sustainability. We then compare the importance of these screening criteria across different types of impact investors (i.e., donors, equity investors, and debt investors). We find that donors pay more attention to the importance of the societal problem and less attention to financial sustainability than do equity and debt investors. Additionally, equity investors place a higher value on the large-scale implementation of the social project than do debt investors. We contribute to the nascent literature on impact investing by documenting how impact investors make investment decisions and by providing a nuanced view of different investor types active in this novel market. Practical implications exist for both impact investors and social enterprises."

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"The idea that start-ups and young firms (hereafter entrepreneurial firms) create jobs is very popular among policy-makers and has led to a large number of studies investigating the effect of entrepreneurship on job creation. Recently, however, society and many players in the political arena have begun to care not only about job quantity and quantitative employment levels, but also about the quality of the jobs created. This study provides the first systematic literature review of research on the quantity and quality of jobs created by entrepreneurial firms. The review concludes with policy implications and avenues for future research."

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