"This paper examines the impact of government-sponsored venture capitalists (GVCs) on the success of enterprises. Using international enterprise-level data, we identify a surprising non-monotonicity in the effect of GVC on the likelihood of exit via initial public offerings (IPOs) or third party...

"Novel early stage ideas face uncertainty on the expertise needed to elaborate them, which creates a need to circulate them widely to find a match. Yet as information is not excludable, shared ideas may be stolen, reducing incentives to innovate. Still, in idea-rich environments inventors may...

"We examine the effect of trust on financial investment and contracting decisions in a micro-economic environment where trust is exogenous. Using hand-collected data on European venture capital, we show that the Eurobarometer measure of trust among nations significantly affects investment...