For the sample period of 1965-1992, Kortum and Lerner (2000) find that venture capital (VC) investments have a positive impact on patent count at industry level, and this impact is larger than that of Ramp;D expenditures. We confirm that this positive impact continued to be present and became...

Policy makers typically interpret positive relations between venture capital investments and innovations as an evidence that venture capital investments stimulate innovation (quot;VC-first hypothesisquot;). This interpretation is, however, one-sided because there may be a reverse causality that...

Any factor that makes acquisition more appealing should increase the number of acquisition that occur. This idea has been captured in standard static models in the literature. However, an increase in the number of acquisitions today means fewer firms exist to perform acquisitions in the future....

We study the matching problem between firms and CEOs, extending a popular version of the principal-agent model developed by Holmstrom and Milgrom (1987). In their model, the optimal pay-performance sensitivity decreases in firm risks and agent's risk aversion, and increases in agent's...

We analyze the contractual relation between workers and their employers when there is nominal risk. The key feature of the problem is that the consumption deflator is random and observed sometime after the effort is exerted. The worker's effort is not observable, and to induce the agent to work,...

Why do some start-up firms raise funds from banks and others from venture capitalists? To answer this question, I develop a model of start-up financing when intellectual property rights are not well protected. The upside of VC financing is that the VC understands the business better than a bank....

Evidence suggests that young firm acquisitions have outgrown both IPOs and established firm acquisitions. To study this phenomenon, we develop a dynamic equilibrium model of mergers and acquisitions as efficient reallocation of assets. A firm may build assets that it may not be able to manage...

We analyze the contractual relation between workers and their employers when there is nominal risk. The key feature of the problem is that the consumption deflator is random and observed sometime after the effort is exerted. The worker's effort is not observable, and to induce the agent to work,...

This paper develops a model of R&D with firms' life-cycles. When a young firm creates new knowledge, the firm may hesitate to implement the knowledge because it is hard to predict if the implementation will be successful. Nevertheless, once the firm implements the knowledge successfully (and...

This paper argues that a large technological innovation may lead to a merger wave by inducing entrepreneurs to seek funds from technologically knowledgeable firms -experts. When a large technological innovation occurs, the ability of non-experts (banks) to discriminate between good and bad...