Venture capital has become a dominant form of innovation finance, used by many high-tech startups. Europe lags the U.S. in both VC activity and the creation of successful startups, and has recently been surpassed by China. Few European countries have rates of VC activity commensurable to their...

Whether a manager leads the innovation efforts of a firm in line with shareholder preferences has a substantial impact on the firm's market value and growth. This in turn influences aggregate productivity growth and welfare. Using data on US public firms, we find that (i) firms with better...