VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

In the international arena an increasing number of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have succeeded, yielding both micro-level financial rewards and macro-level prosperity and improved economic conditions for many industrialized countries. The next logical "group," with a potential to reap such benefits, is expected to be the emerging economies. This study tabulates and analyzes an emerging market VC-investment dataset, and then identifying and testing a number of independent economic and financial factors that explain such investments for a selected group of emerging countries. Based on 1990-2003 data covering 19 nations, the regression results show four of the five proposed variables, namely GDP per capita, long-term capital inflows, stock market listings, and a measure of stock market correlations, to be significant in explaining VC investments.