Journal article
To name your venture after Oxbridge or not, that is the question!
- Abstract:
- This paper examines the significance of including a company’s location of origin in its name, a practice known as using an eponymous location name. Our theory demonstrates that signalling an origin from a prestigious location is an appealing strategy for relatively weaker companies, whereas stronger companies tend to avoid it. We empirically test this theory on a sample of UK university spin-outs from 2010-2021. Eponymous location names are particularly prevalent among spin-outs from Oxford and Cambridge. As predicted by our theory, eponymous location names are negatively related to measures of fundraising success after controlling for spin-out origin.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 498.9KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/caje.70059
Authors
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Journal:
- Canadian Journal of Economics More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-06-14
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-05-10
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1540-5982
- ISSN:
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0008-4085
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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2126794
- Local pid:
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pubs:2126794
- Deposit date:
-
2025-05-27
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Canadian Economics Association
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 Canadian Economics Association.
- Notes:
- The author accepted manuscript (AAM) of this paper has been made available under the University of Oxford's Open Access Publications Policy, and a CC BY public copyright licence has been applied.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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