This paper examines three rationales for the syndication of venture capital investments, using a sample of 271 private biotechnology firms. Syndication is commonplace, even in the first-round investments. Experienced venture capitalists primarily syndicate first-round investments to venture...

This paper presents a theory of liquidity where we explicitly model the liquidity of the security as a choice variable, which enables the manager raising the funds to screen for "deep pocket" investors, i.e. these that have a low likelihood of a liquidity shock. By choosing the degree of...

This article examines the impact of patent scope on firm value. I develop a proxy for patent scope based on the International Patent Classification scheme. Using a sample of 535 financing rounds at 173 privately held venture-backed biotechnology firms. I show that the breadth of patent...