Does Shark Tank Enhance Entrepreneurial Activities?

This paper examines if and how mass media enhances entrepreneurial activities. Specifically, we use the staggered introduction of the television show Dragons’ Den, also known as Shark Tank, across countries to analyze the impact of mass media on entrepreneurial activity. The show consists of entrepreneurial contestants that present their business idea to investors. We hypothesize that viewers get motivated by the show to start their own business and can learn how to develop and present business ideas to investors by observing successful and unsuccessful pitches on the show. Our results show a significant short-term increase of around 14.6% (~ 18 per 100.000 capita) in the number of new firms in the first year after the show starts to air.