Institutions and Venture Capital

Josh   Lerner; Joacim  Tag

Article | Industrial and Corporate Change | February 2013

Institutions and Venture Capital

by Josh Lerner and Joacim Tag

Abstract

We survey the literature on venture capital and institutions and present a case study comparing the development of the venture capital market in the United States and Sweden. Our literature survey underscores that the legal environment, financial market development, the tax system, labor market regulations, and public spending on research and development correlate with venture capital activities across countries. Our case study suggests these institutional differences led to the later development of an active venture capital market in Sweden compared with the United States. In particular, a later development of financial markets and a heavier tax burden for entrepreneurs have played a key role.

Keywords: Venture Capital; Organizations; Taxation; Entrepreneurship; Financial Markets; United States; Sweden;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Lerner, Josh, and Joacim Tag. "Institutions and Venture Capital." Industrial and Corporate Change 22, no. 1 (February 2013): 153–182.

Impact investing has grown significantly over the past 15 years. From a niche investing segment with only $25 billion AUM in 2013 (WEF 2013), it experienced double-digit growth and developed into a market with an estimated $502 billion AUM (Mudaliapar and Dithrich 2019). Despite the growth and maturation of impact investing, gathering complete and accurate data on the characteristics of this industry continues to be a challenge. This paper describes the creation of a new dataset on both impact investors and the portfolio companies they fund, comprising 409 impact investors and 13,212 portfolio companies. We code impact investors according to established categories such as legal form, types of investments and return objectives. We then develop measures of the relative importance of social impact for each investor in an effort to add a new analytic categorization. We conclude by describing the distribution of investors and firms across these various categories.

Although late-stage venture capital (VC) activity did not change dramatically in the first two months after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., early-stage VC activity declined by 38%. The particular sensitivity of early-stage VC investment to market conditions—which we show to be common across recessions spanning four decades from 1976 to 2017—raises questions about the pro-cyclicality of VC and its implications for innovation, especially in light of the common narrative that VC is relatively insulated from public markets. We find that the implications for innovation are not benign: innovation conducted by VC-backed firms in recessions is less highly cited, less original, less general, and less closely related to fundamental science. These effects are more pronounced for startups financed by early-stage venture funds. Given the important role that VC plays in financing breakthrough innovations in the economy, our findings have implications for the broader discussion on the nature of innovation across business cycles.

Article | Journal of Financial Economics | May 2020

The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets

Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev and Josh Lerner

This paper explores the creation and evolution of new stock exchanges around the world geared towards entrepreneurial companies, known as second-tier exchanges. Using hand-collected novel data, we document the proliferation of these new stock exchanges that were created in a large number of countries, attracted a significant volume of global IPOs, were introduced fairly cyclically, and had lower listing requirements when compared to first-tier stock exchanges. We find that increases in demand for entrepreneurial capital—as proxied for by patenting, IPOs, and stock market valuations—led to a higher likelihood of the introduction of second-tier exchanges. We find no evidence that new second-tier exchanges diverted the existing flow of IPOs from established stock exchanges. Shareholder protection strongly predicted exchange success, even in countries with high levels of venture capital activity, patenting, and financial market development. Second-tier exchanges in countries with better shareholder protection allowed younger, less profitable, but faster-growing companies to raise more capital. These results highlight the importance of institutions in enabling the provision of entrepreneurial capital to young companies.

Keywords: entrepreneurial finance; stock exchanges; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Initial Public Offering; Capital;

Citation:

Bernstein, Shai, Abhishek Dev, and Josh Lerner. "The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets." Journal of Financial Economics 136, no. 2 (May 2020): 307–329. View Details

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