Using panel data for 19 OECD countries covering the period 1986-1995, we find effect of general economic uncertainty on venture-capital investments to be significantly negative. The more irreversible late-stage venture-capital investments are much more adversely affected by such uncertainty than...

Several recent studies, including those by Pindyck (1991), Pindyck and Solimano (1993), Dixit and Pindyck (1994), Episcopos (1995), and Abel et al. (1996), suggest an important linkage between the effect of uncertainty on investment and the irreversibility of the latter. This paper broadly...