This paper offers a new explanation for the prevalent use of convertible securities in venture capital finance. Convertible securities can be used to endogenously allocate cash flow rights as a function of the realized quality of the project. This property can be used to mitigate the double...

When a young entrepreneurial firm matures, it is often necessary to replace the founding entrepreneur by a professional manager. This replacement decision can be affected by the private benefits of control enjoyed by the entrepreneur which gives rise to a conflict of interest between the...

We analyze incentives to develop entrepreneurial ideas for venture capitalists (VCs) and incumbent firms. If VCs are sufficiently better at judging an idea's value and if it is sufficiently more costly to patent low than high value ideas, VCs acquire valuable ideas, develop them beyond the level...

This Paper evaluates the ability of venture capital funds to identify and bring to market successful high-tech Israeli companies during the period 1991 to 2000. Using a newly constructed and highly detailed database we find that: (1) The probability of survival until the IPO stage is higher for...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

The Paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high-risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide equity finance. They must structure the entrepreneur’s profit share and base salary to assure their incentives for full...

We claim that the stock market encourages business creation, innovation, and growth by allowing the recycling of ‘informed capital’. Due to incentive and information problems, start-ups face larger costs of going public than mature firms. Sustaining a tight relationship with a monitor (bank,...

This Paper presents the first model where entry deterrence takes place through financial rather than product-market channels. In standard models of the interaction between product and financial markets, a firm's use of financial instruments deters entry by affecting product market behaviour,...

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

Why do some start-up firms raise funds from banks and others from venture capitalists? To answer this question, I study a model in which the venture capitalist can evaluate the entrepreneur’s project more accurately than the bank but can also threaten to steal it from the entrepreneur. The...