Shai Bernstein

Shai Bernstein is a distinguished scholar in Business & Economics whose research centers on entrepreneurial finance, venture capital, private equity, and innovation. He earned his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University. Bernstein served as an assistant professor of finance at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business for eight years, where he made significant contributions to the field through empirical studies on firm financing and performance. He currently holds the MBA Class of 1960 Professor of Business Administration position and serves as Unit Head of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School.

Bernstein's academic interests focus on financial issues related to startups and high-growth firms, including their interaction with innovation and entrepreneurial activity. His influential paper 'Does Going Public Affect Innovation?' published in the Journal of Finance in 2015, revealed that innovation declines substantially after firms go public, earning the Brattle Prize for the best paper in the Journal of Finance. Other key publications from his Stanford period include 'The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring' (Journal of Finance, 2016), which demonstrated that hands-on venture capital involvement enhances startup success; 'Private Equity and Industry Performance' (Management Science, 2017), co-authored with Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen, and Per Strömberg; and 'Attracting Early Stage Investors: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment' (Journal of Finance, 2017, lead article). Later works such as 'Private Equity and Financial Fragility during the Crisis' (Review of Financial Studies, 2019) showed private equity-backed firms exhibited greater resilience during the 2008 financial crisis, and 'Asset Allocation in Bankruptcy' (Journal of Finance, 2019, lead article) examined bankruptcy decision-making. More recent research includes 'The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States' (2022), which won the 2019 Charles River Associates Award for Best Paper on Corporate Finance from the Western Finance Association. During his tenure at Stanford GSB, he was named the Dhirubhai Ambani Faculty Scholar in Entrepreneurship for 2015-2016. Bernstein's rigorous empirical analyses have profoundly influenced academic and policy discussions on how financing structures shape firm innovation, productivity, and economic resilience.