Benchmarking the Returns to Venture

We describe a new index of the current and historical returns to venture-type capital. The conceptual basis for the index is the value of a continuously reinvested value-weighted portfolio of all venture-backed and similar pre-public companies. It provides a metric for private equity comparable to the S&P 500 for public equity. We build the index from valuations revealed in episodic transactions in the companies' shares - private placements of new rounds of equity funding, IPOs, acquisitions, and liquidations. Our approach to dealing with the episodic nature of the data is similar to the one used in constructing indexes of real-estate value from transaction data for individual properties. We have extended earlier sources of data to deal with selection bias - we tracked down unfavorable valuations that were less likely to be reported in the earlier data. We also use econometric techniques to handle the remaining selection bias. The resulting index has important uses in marking venture portfolios to market and in assessing the performance of venture investments.

The Incentives to Start New Companies: Evidence from Venture Capital

The standard venture-capital contract rewards entrepreneurs only for creating successful companies that go public or are acquired on favorable terms. As a result, entrepreneurs receive no help from venture capital in avoiding the huge idiosyncratic risk of the typical venture-backed startup. Entrepreneurs earned an average of $9 million from each company that succeeded in attracting venture funding. But entrepreneurs are generally specialized in their own companies and bear the burden of the idiosyncratic risk. Entrepreneurs with a coefficient of relative risk aversion of two would be willing to sell their interests for less than$1 million at the outset rather than face that risk. The standard financial contract provides entrepreneurs capital supplied by passive investors and rewards entrepreneurs for successful outcomes. We track the division of value for a sample of the great majority of U.S. venture-funded companies over the period form 1987 through 2005. Venture capitalists received an average of $5 million in fee revenue from each company they backed. The outside investors in venture capital received a financial return substantially above that of publicly traded companies, but that the excess is mostly a reward for bearing risk. The pure excess return measured by the alpha of the Capital Asset Pricing Model is positive but may reflect only random variation.

The Preferential Trade Area (PTA) for Eastern and Southern African states: strategy, progress, and problems

The Preferential Trade Area (PTA) of Eastern and Southern African States is a relatively new economic grouping of states that is designed to foster sub-regional cooperation and integration. This paper discusses the strategy that lies behind the establishment of the PTA, provides an overview of sub-regional trade and obstacles to trade before the formation of the PTA, describes the progress of the PTA since it became operational in July, 1984, and assesses that progress and the problems that have been encountered. While there are many aspects of the PTA, including industrial and agricultural cooperation, this paper focuses primarily on sub-regional trade and trade-related issues

Helping primary school pupils to understand the relationship between needs, wants and technology

This research might help you...To consider the purposes of the activities in your classroom. If you want pupils to reflect on something you will need to give appropriate time, stimulus and means of responseTo use reading and discussing stories as a means of enabling pupils to think about things outside their immediate experienceTo put designing and making activities in a historical context which has personal appeal and involvementTo link questions to designing and making activities in a way that enables pupils to develop a wider appreciation of technologyI have been struck by how many children in primary school see technology in a limited way; limited in fact to their own designing and making in school. Through these activities they had difficulty in grasping a wider view of technology. In this article I describe my attempts to widen their perception of technology

High-fidelity Simulation in Ensuring Clinical Success for Senior Maternity Students

Nurses arrive in hospital settings poorly prepared to provide quality patient care. To address this problem, the researcher compared the effectiveness of using high-fidelity simulation (HFS) in addition to traditional hospital-based clinical experiences versus traditional hospital-based clinical experience alone. Results indicated that HFS supports clinical success.https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/archivedposters/1011/thumbnail.jp

National socialism, the German tragedy

While this study purports to offer nothing new or original to the enormous body of research pertaining to Nazism, the purpose of this thesis is to provide an examination of the political core contained in this particular ideology. The components of National Socialism and their ultimate effect on Germany will be the major focus of this thesis. Nazism, as a political ideology, was an extreme force that shook the foundations of the twentieth-century world. After an intensive survey of the literature in this field, the author realized that little could be added. The objective, here, is to examine the historical roots from which Nazism developed, its ideological core, and its effect upon the German state