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Discussion Paper
Doing Well by Doing Good? Community Development Venture Capital
In a new working paper, Josh Lerner and I explore how the venture capital (VC) model can be harnessed to achieve socially targeted ends by examining the investment record of community development venture capital (CDVC) firms. Our results are mixed. Investments made by CDVC firms are less likely to succeed than are investments made by traditional VC firms. This lower probability of success persists even after controlling for the fact that CDVC firms invest in industries and geographies that have, on average, lower success rates. However, we do find that CDVC firms have the benefit of bringing ...
Working Paper
Venture Capital and the Performance of Incumbents
I study the effect of investment in young, private firms by venture capitalists (VC) on public firms in the same industry. I construct an instrument for VC investment that relies on individual VC's investment histories, holdings of equity stakes in IPO firms, and aggregate market returns immediately following those IPOs. I find that increased VC investment has a large effect on incumbent profitability. The effect arises due to higher costs and not depressed sales. The effect is short lived as firms respond by reallocating resources away from treated markets and by reducing their use of labor.
Working Paper
Venture Capital and Underpricing: Capacity Constraints and Early Sales
I present a model of the venture capital (VC) and public markets in which VCs suffer from capacity constraints, due to the shortage of skilled VC managers. Consequently, VC firms can only handle a limited number of new projects at once, having to take ongoing projects public in order to take advantage of new opportunities. This framework is able to match key features presented by the VC and initial public offer (IPO) empirical literatures: (1) VC-backed firms are younger, smaller, and less profitable at the IPO than their non-VC backed counterparts; (2) VC-backed IPOs are more underpriced ...