Financial theory creates a puzzle. Some authors argue that high-risk entrepreneurs choose debt contracts instead of equity contracts since risky but high returns are of relatively more value for a loan-financed firm. Conversely, authors who focus explicitly on start-up finance predict that...

This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms' profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms' performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain...

We examine the relation between venture capital (VC) investments, M&A activity, and merger competition laws in 48 countries 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...

Equity funding is a widespread financing form that often accompanies the life cycle of innovative ventures from initial stages until maturity. From the perspective of investors, the event defining the success of an equity financing operation is the exit, which represents the moment when they...