Academic family

Scholarship can be a solitary endeavor but knowledge, skills, and network ties are typically handed down from one generation to the next. Hence the notion of the academic family (here is a famous one in economics). I have some research on progress on this topic. But here I want to share information on my own academic family.

I was fortunate to have a dissertation adviser, Oliver Williamson, who produced a number of outstanding PhD students including Scott Masten, Barry Harris, Vai-Lam Mui, Howard Shelanski, Nick Argyres, Emerson Tiller, Jackson Nickerson, Brian Silverman, Joanne Oxley, Janet Bercovitz, John de Figueiredo, Witold Henisz, Kyle Mayer, Barak Richman, and Jeff Macher (apologies to others I may have missed).

Williamson’s dissertation was chaired by Richard Cyert. His teachers at Carnegie also included Herbert Simon and James March.

I was also greatly influenced by Murray N. Rothbard (and made it onto Richard Ebeling’s version of the Austrian family tree.)


But this page is for my PhD students. Here are my former dissertation advisees, in reverse chronological order:

Gordon Miller
Dissertation: “Online Maker Communities: Developing the Capabilities of Aspiring Entrepreneurs for New Economic Realities” (2022)
Current Placement: King’s College, Pennsylvania

Russell Browder
Dissertation: “Intermediation and Disintermediation of Resources for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Maker Movement” (2020)
Current placement: Price College of Business, University of Oklahoma

Eric Mota
Dissertation: “Entrepreneurship in the Public Interest: Varieties, Effects, and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Arrangements” (2020)
Current placement: Barton School of Business, Wichita State University

Jingjing Wang
Dissertation: “Three Essays on Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice” (2016)
Current placement: School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Information Science and Technology

Mónica de Zelaya
Dissertation: “The Ripple Effect of Entrepreneurship” (2016)
Current placement: School of Economics, Franciso Marroquín University

Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen (co-supervised with Lasse B. Lien)
Dissertation: “Firms in Recessions” (2015)
Current placement: Department of Strategy and Management, Norwegian School of Economics

Jong-Chul Won
Dissertation: “Essays in the Theory of the Firm: The Entrepreneurship Approach” (2013)
Inaugural placement: Columbia College

Per L. Bylund
Dissertation: “Specialization and the Theory of the Firm” (2012)
Current placement: Spears College of Business, Oklahoma State University

Mario Mondelli
Dissertation: “The Organization of Agribusiness Financing and Interfirm Cooperation” (2011)
Placement: CINVE-Uruguay)

Jianhong Xue
Dissertation: “Three Essays on Entrepreneurship and Economic Change” (2007)
Current placement: Northwest A&F University

Molly Burress (co-chaired with Michael L. Cook)
Dissertation: “Organizational Spawning: Investment in Farmer-Controlled Businesses” (2005)
Current placement: US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Kathrin Zoeller
Dissertation: “Corporate Structure and Corporate Control in Europe and the United States” (2002).
Current placement: Weatherford International


Publications with PhD advisees

Miller, Gordon, and Peter G. Klein, “The Wisdom of Shared Interests: Entrepreneurial Intelligence and Its Development Through Online Maker Communities,” in Alain Fayolle, David Audretsch, Sarah Jack, and Wadid Lamine, eds., DeGruyter Handbook of Digital Entrepreneurship (Berlin: DeGruyter, forthcoming).

Klein, Peter G., Robert Wuebker, Mo Chen, and Kathrin Zoeller, “Evaluating an Organizational Innovation: Evidence from the Conglomerate Merger Wave,” Industrial and Corporate Change 30, no. 4 (August 2021): 905-26.

Packard, Mark, Per Bylund, and Peter G. Klein, “Human Action and Human Design: An Austrian Approach to Design Science,” Journal of Business Venturing Design 1, nos. 1–2 (July–December 2021).

Klein, Peter G., Robert Wuebker, and Kathrin Zoeller, Relationship Banking and Conflicts of Interest: Evidence from German Initial Public Offerings,” Journal of Corporate Finance 39 (August 2016): 210–21.

Wang, Jingjing, Mei Chen, and Peter G. Klein, “China’s Dairy United: A New Model for Milk Production,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 97, no. 2 (March 2015): 618–27.

Klein, Peter G., and Per L. Bylund, “The Place of Austrian Economics in Contemporary Entrepreneurship Research,” Review of Austrian Economics 27, no. 3 (September 2014): 259–79

Bylund, Per L., Christopher H. Holbrook, and Peter G. Klein, “‘They Have the Internet on Computers Now?’ Entrepreneurship and Economics in The Simpsons,” In Joshua C. Hall, ed., Homer Economicus: The Simpsons and Economics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 61–69.

Mondelli, Mario P., and Peter G. Klein. “Asset Specificity and Firms’ Financial Structure: The Case of Agricultural Production.” Managerial and Decision Economics 35, no. 2 (March 2014): 145–60.

Klein, Peter G., John L. Chapman, and Mario P. Mondelli, “Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Governance: Time for a Balanced View,” Academy of Management Perspectives 27, no. 1 (2013): 39–51.

Klein, Peter G., and Mario P. Mondelli, “Transaction Cost Theory,” in Eric Kessler, ed., Encyclopedia of Management Theory (New York: Sage, 2013), pp. 888–92.

Foss, Nicolai J., Peter G. Klein, and Per L. Bylund, “Entrepreneurship and the Theory of the Firm,” in Daniel Hjorth, ed., Handbook of Organizational Entrepreneurship (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2012), pp. 49–63.

Mondelli, Mario P., and Peter G. Klein. “The Role of Asset Specificity in Financing Choice in the Agrifood Sector.” Revista de Economia e Administração 12, no. 2 (2012): 180–97.

Xue, Jianhong, and Peter G. Klein, “Regional Determinants of Technology Entrepreneurship,” International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing 1, no. 3 (2010): 291–308.

Burress, Molly J., Michael L. Cook, and Peter G. Klein, “The Clustering of Organizational Innovation: Developing Governance Models for Vertical Integration,” International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 11, no. 4 (2008): 49–75.