We analyze the role of trademarks in entrepreneurial finance, hypothesizing that trademarks play two important roles: a “protective” role, leading to better product market performance; and an “informational” role, signaling higher firm quality to investors. We develop testable hypotheses...

The original intention of the government was to provide financial subsidies to firms by implementing innovation support policies. In turn, this will encourage these firms to carry out technological innovation activities. However, there are still differing views in the academic community on...

This paper studies a repeated-game model in which firms can build a reputation for rewarding innovative employees. In any Pareto efficient equilibrium, low-value innovations get developed in established firms, while high-value innovations get developed in startups. The threshold level can be...

We provide the first empirical evidence on the determinants of the lending decision of venture debt firms, specialized institutions that provide loans to finance growth of high-tech startups. Building on existing field interviews and case studies, we design a choice experiment of the lending...

Using a large sample of angel and venture capital (VC) financing data from the Crunchbase and VentureXpert databases and private firm data from the NETS database, we address three important research questions. First, we analyze the relative extent of value addition by angels versus VCs to...

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms. Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firm characteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explaining young firms'...

We show that venture capitalists' (VCs) on-site involvement with their portfolio companies leads to an increase in (1) innovation and (2) the likelihood of a successful exit. We rule out selection effects by exploiting an exogenous source of variation in VC involvement: the introduction of new...

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms. Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firm characteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explaining young firms'...