It is still an open question what kind of smart capital relational investors actually supply. We divide smart capital into several components and conduct a survey among 85 German suppliers of start-up finance. The results show that the degree of "smartness" is determined by the financial product...

Using a comprehensive database of European firms, we study how private equity affects the rate of firm entry. We find that private equity investment benefits new business incorporation, especially in industries with naturally higher entry rates and R&D intensity. A two standard deviation...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

Venture capital (VC) and growth are examined both empirically and theoretically. Empirically, VC-backed startups have higher early growth rates and initial patent quality than non-VC-backed ones. VC backing increases a startup's likelihood of reaching the right tails of the firm size and...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncer-tainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

We analyze governance with a dataset on investments of venture capitalists in 3848 portfolio firms in 39 countries from North and South America, Europe and Asia spanning 1971-2003. We find that cross-country differences in Legality have a significant impact on the governance structure of...

Based on 1182 dyads of German new ventures and venture capitalists involved in a financing round between 2002 and 2007, we examine the impact of spatial proximity on the likelihood of an investment. We find that with each triplication of journey time the relative likelihood of an investment...

External finance is central for nascent entrepreneurs, people in the process of starting new ventures. We argue that nascent entrepreneurs use patents and prototypes in order to signal their ability to appropriate the returns from their innovation as well as the project´s feasibility. Our...

This survey reviews the theoretical literature on high impact entrepreneurship. The survey is guided in part by the recent classification changes at the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) regarding entrepreneurship. The board voted to create a new classification code, L26, for...