Start-up entrepreneurs are often commercially inexperienced. In giving managerial advice, venture capitalists can importantly enhance the success of innovative but highly risky ventures. The supply of experienced venture capitalists is not easily increased, however. When the rate of business...

A venture capitalist faces a trade-off between the extent of managerial advice allocated to each start-up and the total number of firms advised. Diminishing returns to advice per firm call for a larger portfolio. As advice gets diluted, further expansion of the portfolio eventually becomes...

Start-up entrepreneurs are often commercially inexperienced. In giving managerial advice, venture capitalists can importantly enhance the success of innovative but highly risky ventures. The supply of experienced venture capitalists is not easily increased, however. When the rate of business...

Heterogeneous firms invest in R&D and expansion investment. Venture capital specializes in R&D financing where problems are largest. Marginal firms get funded by venture capital, while firms with larger debt capacity obtain cheaper bank financing. In the latestage, cash-rich firms invest at an...

Venture capitalists, representing informed capital, screen, monitor and advise start-up entrepreneurs. The paper reports three new results on venture capital (VC) finance. First, there is an optimal number of companies in the VC portfolio with a trade-off between the number of companies and the...

In financing start-up firms, venture capitalists carefully select among alternative projects, design incentive compatible financial contracts and support portfolio companies with value enhancing managerial advice. This paper considers how venture capitalists can induce selfselection among...

In recent years, venture capital has become an important source for nancing young entrepreneurial rms. Given the apparently more innovative nature and extra value added of venture capital backed rms compared to other firms, policy makers have taken an increasing interest in an active venture...

This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and...

This paper discusses the role of public policy towards the venture capital industry. The model emphasizes four margins: supply of entrepreneurs due to career choice, entry of venture capital funds and search for investment opportunities, entrepreneurial effort and venture capital advice during...

Venture capitalists not only finance but also advise and thereby add value to young innovative firms. The prospects of venture capital backed firms thus depend on joint efforts of entrepreneurs and informed venture capitalists, and are subject to double moral hazard. In financing a portfolio of...