Direct and indirect government venture capital investments in Europe

This paper provides evidence of the broad government presence in the European venture capital industry. Two forms of intervention are considered: first, direct stand-alone government venture capital funds and, second, indirect private funds to which governments commit funds as limited partners. The overall government presence seems to be much more important than previously documented, as we find that the government intervenes, on average, in 42.2% of venture capital investments in Europe. We also show that European countries are heterogeneous in their use of these two channels, and we consider possible early explanations for this choice of policy mix. Lastly, we provide some evidence on the consequences of these policies in terms of SME's perceived access to financing

Tackling the Scale-up Gap

The number of scale-up businesses in the EU, particularly unicorns, lags behind the US and China. This is partially attributed to a deficit in scale-up finance. Based on an a webinar between experts which took place on 5th October 2021, this paper reports and comments on the available evidence of the scale-up financing gap in the EU and discusses its causes and consequences. The paper also reviews what types of instruments might address this gap and discusses issues that need to be addressed in the formulation of effective policy interventions. Finally, it points to missing data, existing knowledge gaps, and areas on which further analysis is required to define better policies

A new shooting method for quasi-boundary regularization of multi-dimensional backward heat conduction problems

International audienc

The effects of EU-funded guarantee instruments of the performance of small and medium enterprises: Evidence from France

This paper provides a policy-oriented summary of the econometric study commissioned by the European Court of Auditors, in the context of its audit of EU-funded loan guarantee instruments.2 The study assesses the real performance effects of EU-guaranteed loans to SMEs disbursed in France during the years 2002 to 2016. The study estimates the average treatment effect of guaranteed loans over a 10-year period around disbursement, using a combination of difference-in-difference estimation, coarsened exact matching and propensity score analysis. On average, French SMEs benefitting from EU-guaranteed loans experienced additional 9% asset growth, 7% sales growth, and 8% employment growth compared to the control group. The economic significance of the effect is typically stronger for smaller and younger firms. Beneficiary SMEs also experienced 5% lower default rates. The study also estimates the effects of guaranteed loans on SME productivity. Consistent with earlier works, the analysis finds a short-run dip in productivity, accompanied by a medium-run recovery and a long-run positive effect, signalling the presence of adjustment costs in the production function following loan-induced investments. The study concludes by discussing potential implications for policy makers and further research

Giovani imprese ad alta tecnologia di fronte alla crisi. quali strategie di reazione?

The paper explores the reaction of new technology-based firms (NTBF) in Italy to the recent economic crisis. Using data from the RITA database on the Italian NTBF population founded since 1984, we document the consequences of the crisis in terms of: i) exit rates; ii) the growth rates of sales and employees in the firms that had survived the crisis at year-end 2009; and iii) the owner-managers 2010 performance expectations. Lastly, we describe how firms reacted to the crisis and the strategic changes it induced them to make. Our data show clearly that taking a "pro-active" approach not only led to higher growth rates in 2009, but also improved the outlook for 2010.Giovani imprese ad alta tecnologia, crisi economica, strategia

The geography of venture capital and entrepreneurial ventures’ demand for external equity

In this paper, we study how the geography of venture capital (VC) and the location of entrepreneurial ventures affect the propensity of the latter to seek external equity financing. We analyse a sample of 533 European high-tech entrepreneurial ventures and examine their external equity-seeking behaviour in the 1984–2009 period. We find that ventures are more likely to seek external equity when the local availability of VC is higher, whereas the level of competition of the local VC market plays a negligible role. The stimulating effect of the availability of VC on the demand for external equity rapidly decreases with distance and vanishes at approximately 250 km. It also vanishes when national borders are crossed, except for countries at close cultural and institutional distance. Moreover, the distance decay of the stimulating effect of the availability of VC varies with the characteristics of prospective VC investors, namely, their private or public ownership and governance, and their reputation. These results have important implications for the policy that European countries and the European Commission should implement to foster the demand for VC by entrepreneurial ventures, thereby improving the functioning of the VC market in Europe

The role of personality traits in entrepreneurial finance

International audienc

The patterns of venture capital investment in Europe

We study the investment patterns of different types of venture capital (VC) investors in Europe: independent VC, corporate VC, bank-affiliated VC and governmental VC. We rely on a unique dataset that covers 1663 first VC investments made by 846 investors in 737 young high-tech entrepreneurial ventures in seven European countries. We compare the relative specialization indices of the different VC investor types across several dimensions that characterize investee companies: industry, age, size, stage of development, distance from the investor and country. Our findings indicate that VC investor types in Europe differ substantially in their investment patterns when compared to one another and that, in terms of investment patterns, governmental VC investors appear to be the most distinct type of VC investor. The investment patterns of different VC investors are stable over time and similar across different European countries. Finally, the investment patterns of the different VC investor types in Europe are significantly different from those observed in the USA

What money cannot buy: a new approach to measure venture capital ability to add non-financial resources

Grounding our work on the resource-based view of the firm, we study and quantify the impact of non-financial resources added by venture capital (VC) on the growth performance of investee companies. While most of the literature compares VC-backed companies with similar companies that did not receive external financing, our originality stems from the use of a counterfactual of companies that received external quasi-equity financing (in the form of participative loans) but not non-financial resources. We use a difference-in-difference (DD) estimator to disentangle the effect of an injection of financial resources (which can be used by companies to acquire non-financial resources) from the contribution of the unique nonfinancial resources brought in by VC (which companies cannot otherwise acquire). Our results are based on a large sample of young Spanish SMEs that received either VC (915) or participative loans (1551) between 2005 and 2013 as first type of financing. We find that the contribution of the non-financial resources leads to yearly increases of 12.86% in employment, 38.13% in total assets, and 54.03% in sales. Furthermore, we find that only the most experienced VC firms contribute with valuable non-financial resources.Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness (ECO2014-55674-R)Depto. de Administración Financiera y ContabilidadFac. de Ciencias Económicas y EmpresarialesTRUEpu