This paper examines bank behavior in venture capital. It considers the relation between a bank's venture capital investments and its subsequent lending, which can be thought of as intertemporal cross-selling. Theory suggests that unlike independent venture capital firms, banks may be strategic...

Venture capital financing is widely believed to be influential for new innovative companies. We provide empirical evidence that venture capital financing is related to product market strategies and outcomes of start-ups. Using a unique hand-collected database of Silicon Valley high-tech...

The venture capital industry experienced its biggest decline ever in 2001. The National Venture Capital Association reports that, in the fourth quarter of 2001, investments by venture capital firms were at approximately a third of the level the year before and the amount of money raised by these...

This paper analyzes the importance of discretion in bank lending decisions. We use a unique dataset of more than 1 million loan applications to customers of German savings banks and can observe accept and reject decisions as well as loan performance. We document that discretion is widespread and...

We administer psychometric tests to senior executives to obtain evidence on their underlying psychological traits and attitudes. We find U.S. CEOs differ significantly from non-U.S. CEOs in terms of their underlying attitudes. In addition, we find that CEOs are significantly more optimistic and...

This paper analyzes the importance of retail consumers' banking relationships for loan defaults using a unique, comprehensive dataset of over one million loans by savings banks in Germany. We find that loans of retail customers, who have a relationship with their savings bank prior to applying...