Optimal Public Policy for Venture Capital Backed Innovation

This Paper discusses the role of public policy towards the venture capital industry. The model emphasises four margins: supply of entrepreneurs due to career choice, entry of venture capital funds and search for investment opportunities, simultaneous entrepreneurial effort and managerial advice subject to double moral hazard, and mark-up pricing when the successful firm introduces a new good. The Paper derives an optimal policy that succeeds to implement a first best allocation in decentralized equilibrium. It also considers short- and long-run comparative static and welfare effects of piecemeal reform with regard to the capital gains tax, innovation subsidy, public R&D spending and other policy initiatives.