We examine the relation between venture capital (VC) investments and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity around the world. We find evidence of a strong positive association between VC investments and lagged M&A activity, consistent with the hypothesis that an active M&A market provides...

Foreign investors' changing appetite for risk-taking have been shown to be a key determinant of the global financial cycle. Such fluctuations in risk sentiment also correlate with the dynamics of UIP premia, capital flows, and exchange rates. To understand how these risk sentiment changes...

After a boom and bust cycle in the early 2010s, venture capital (VC) investments are, once again, flowing towards green businesses. In this paper, we use Crunchbase data on 150,000 US startups founded between 2000 and 2020 to better understand why VC initially did not prove successful in funding...

We study how investment fees vary within private-capital funds. Net-of-fee return clustering suggests that most funds have two tiers of fees, and we decompose differences across tiers into both management and performance-based fees. Managers of venture capital funds and those in high demand are...

Startups in IT and life sciences appear to be flourishing. However, startups in other sectors, such as new materials, automation, and eco-innovations, which are often called "deep tech", seem to struggle. We argue that innovations with both technical and commercial challenges, typical of deep...

The U.S. entrepreneurial finance market has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Entrepreneurs raising their first round of venture capital retain 30% more equity in their firm and are more likely to control their board of directors. Late-stage startups are raising larger amounts of...

We create a novel dataset to examine the nature and determinants of dual-class IPOs. We document that dual-class firms have different types of controlling shareholders and wedges between voting and economic rights. We find that the founders' wedge is largest when founders have stronger...

We provide evidence on the value of patents to startups by leveraging the random assignment of applications to examiners with different propensities to grant patents. Using unique data on all first-time applications filed at the U.S. Patent Office since 2001, we find that startups that win the...

During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic change in IPO activity around the world. Though vibrant IPO activity, attributed to better institutions and governance, used to be a strength of the U.S., it no longer is. IPO activity in the U.S. has fallen compared to the rest of the world...

This paper proposes a non-pecuniary measure of career achievement, Seniority. Based on a database of over 5 million resumes, this metric exploits the variation in job titles and how long they take to attain. When non-monetary factors influence career choice, inference benefits from the use of...