growth patterns of the european venture capital industry abstract although the european venture capital industry has become nearly as important as its american counterpart little research has been done to describe its nature and importance this study gives in the first place an overview of the importance of the venture capital industry in the major european countries thereafter we look for funding and investment patterns in the different european countries we hypothesize that there is a difference between countries in which the venture capital industry is just emerging and those where the venture capital industry is since long established the data are mainly but not solely taken from the yearly statistics of the european venture capital association evca and cover the period 1984 1989 the characteristics we look at are 1 the sources of the funds flowing into the industry broken down with respect to investor type and geographical location of the investor and 2 the investments broken down with respect to investment stage using the evca definitions of the different stages geographical location degree of syndication and industrial sector of the investee companies in europe as a whole the most important group of investors are the banks 28 the pension funds 17 and the insurance companies 12 banks dominate the swiss industry 48 corporate investors dominate the german swedish and portuguese industries whereas these are nearly completely absent in denmark 2 ireland 4 and the united kingdom 5 eighty percent of all venture capital funds are raised domestically 7 in another european country and the remaining 13 in a non european country almost half of the european investments 44 are made in the expansion stage management buy outs mbos account for another 36 only 14 is invested in seed or start up companies much less than the 30 in the u s half of the venture capital investments in the united kingdom are buy outs the highest start up investment activity takes place in austria and spain on average more than half 54 of the invested amount in europe is syndicated but only 6 internationally while 10 is invested internationally we also search for similarities and dissimilarities in the characteristics of the sources of funds and of the investments the hypothesis is that a growth pattern can be distinguished determining the maturity of the venture capital industry in a particular country the characteristics that we think would discriminate most among the different industry stages are the importance of government agencies pension funds and insurance companies sources of funds of start up later stages or mbo investments and the percentage of international and syndicated investments cluster analyses show that there is a growth pattern but it is less clear than expected characteristics of mature industries are a bigger size relative to the gross national product of the country the presence of pension funds and insurance companies as investors in the industry the syndication of the deals and the absence of the government as an investor in the 1980s investments in management buy outs are mainly done by the mature industries no pattern can be distinguished for the investments in early or later stages the major implication from this study is the fact that the european venture capital industry cannot be approached as a single undifferentiated industry each country has its own structures institutions and policies which make the venture capital industries in the different countries have unique characteristics moreover the european venture capital industry has different characteristics than the american industry this has to be taken into account when comparing both industries

spurious volatility in historical unemployment data this paper shows that the stabilization of the unemployment rate between the pre 1930 and post 1948 eras is an artifact of improvements in data collection procedures prewar methods are used to construct postwar unemployment data that are consistent with the historical data the constructed postwar series is nearly as volatile as the pre 1930 unemployment data the constructed postwar data are systematically more volatile than the actual postwar data because the cyclical behavior of the labor force and productivity are misspecified in the construction procedures the relationship between the actual and constructed postwar unemployment series is used to construct new historical data

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the choice between bank debt and trade credits in business start ups this paper investigates the choice between bank debt and trade credit in business start ups while trade credit is more expensive than bank debt suppliers tend to follow a more lenient liquidation policy when client firms encounter financial distress as a result suppliers are more willing to renegotiate the outstanding debt or grant additional debt whereas banks are more likely to liquidate borrowers upon default given the risky nature of business start ups we argue that the entrepreneur s choice of debt instruments reflects these differences in liquidation policy between lenders and is thus determined by the venture s failure risk the entrepreneur s private control benefits that are lost upon liquidation and the liquidation value of firm assets using unique data on 325 first time business start ups we find that firms in industries with high historical start up failure rates and entrepreneurs who tend to highly value private benefits of control use less bank debt these effects are especially prevalent in start ups where assets have a high liquidation value and thus banks are more likely to liquidate the venture following default

foreign entry cultural barriers and learning this paper examines the longevity of foreign entries hypotheses are developed on the mode start ups vs acquisitions and ownership structure wholly owned vs joint ventures in relation to cultural distance the hypotheses are tested within a framework of organizational learning using data on 225 entries that 13 dutch firms carried out from 1966 onwards results show that the presence of cultural barriers punctuates an organization s learning cultural distance is a prominent factor in foreign entry whenever this involves another firm requiring the firm to engage in double layered acculturation we also identify locational paths of learning the longevity of acquisitions is positively influenced by prior entries of the firm in the same country similarly the longevity of foreign entries in which the firm has a majority stake improves whenever the expanding firm engaged in prior entries in the same country and in other countries in the same cultural block

game theory for central bankers a report to the governor of the bank of england you asked me to review this book for you and try to digest what lessons it might hold for you i can well understand why you delegated this exercise to me you were no doubt already aware that alex cukierman ac is an eminent theoretician who has been applying currently fashionable game theoretic modeling techniques to the study of monetary policy and you may have had some concerns whether you would find the book user friendly in the rest of this review following both your instructions and my own inclinations i shall concentrate primarily upon the lessons and light that his work provides for monetary issues in general and for the conduct of central banking in particular neither you nor i have either the interest or the mathematical competence to assess how far this book represents an advance in the application or technical procedures of game theory as such in that respect the author will no doubt regard this as only a partial and one sided review of his work nevertheless ac hopes that you and other practitioners will read at least some part of the book and he has gone to considerable lengths to try to structure the book into modules of differing levels of technical difficulty and abstraction so that you will read the easy bits thus

benefit estimates for landscape improvements sequential bayesian design and respondents rationality in a choice experiment a multi attribute stated preference approach is used to value low and high impact actions on four major landscape components addressed by the rural environment protection scheme in ireland several methodological issues are addressed the use of prior beliefs on the relative magnitudes of parameters standardized description of different levels of landscape improvements via image manipulation software adoption of efficiency increasing sequential experimental design and sensitivity of benefit estimates to inclusion of responses from irrational respondents results suggest that bayesian design updating delivers significant efficiency gains without loss in respondent efficiency and estimates are upward biased when irrational respondents are included

government as fund of fund and vc fund sponsors effect on employment in portfolio companies governments around the world have set up fund of fund programs to increase the supply of venture capital financing to young growth oriented firms in these programs a government fund of fund acts as limited partner in a venture capital fund the venture capital investment process is hereby delegated to external investors which were selected by the government fund of fund we investigate employment growth in 108 portfolio companies that benefited from the arkimedes fund of fund in flanders accounting for the heterogeneity in the types of venture capital investors managing hybrid funds and the associated goal diversity and resource endowments we find that portfolio companies backed by hybrid independent venture capital funds show greater employment growth than those backed by hybrid captive or hybrid government venture capital funds this finding is relevant because it indicates that the financial objectives of hybrid independent venture capital funds are highly compatible with the government s objective of employment growth as providing companies with superior monitoring and value adding services with the objective of realizing a successful exit creates employment in the process

internationalization of western venture capitalists into emerging markets risk assessment and information in india this paper provides the first analysis of the internationalization of venture capital firms through an examination of risk assessment and information usage by firms in india personal interviews were conducted with executives in 31 84 of the active venture capital firms the paper extends previous research by comparing perceptions of the behavior of domestic venture capital firms in india foreign primarily u s venture capital firms in india and u s venture capital firms in their domestic markets foreign firms in india place significantly greater emphasis on product market factors and accountants reports than domestic firms in india they place significantly less emphasis on financial contributions of management in assessing risk and own due diligence and information from entrepreneurs than do u s firms in their domestic market they make more use of information from trade publications and relating to production capacity and technology and information from accountants reports than do domestic venture capital firms in india the evidence is consistent with venture capital firms adapting to local market conditions rather than implementing recipes from their domestic markets

tariffs and aggregate economic activity lessons from the great depression abstract we argue against the prevailing view that the macroeconomic role of tariffs during the great depression was small to understand the economic channels through which tariffs could have large effects we build a multi sector dynamic equilibrium trade model that captures key features of trade in the 1930s a substantial share of trade was in material inputs and the persistence of the tariff increases had the potential for significant effects on capital accumulation both of these features are important in generating the conclusion that even when trade only represents a small share of output tariffs can have a significant impact on gdp simulation of the model suggests that the global escalation of the tariff war precipitated the collapse of world trade along with declines of several percent in international output and investment

sources and effects of utility theoretic inconsistency in stated preference surveys goods and services cattin and wittink louviere more recently health economists have recognized sp as an appropriate technique for quantifying health care preferences johnson banzhaf and desvousges johannesson jbnsson and karlsson ryan and hughes sp analysis encompasses several multiresponse multiattribute preferenceelicitation techniques that allow respondents to systematically evaluate trade offs among multiple environmental attributes or among environmental and nonenvironmental attributes

the founding rate of venture capital firms in three european countries 1970 1990 abstract in this article the sectorial and environmental forces that facilitate or inhibit the creation of venture capital companies are studied in the three european countries where the industry is most developed the united kingdom france and the netherlands the focus is on the start up phase of the industry the period from 1970 1990 the founding of firms can be studied on four different levels entrepreneurial organizational population and macroeconomic in this study a population approach is taken this implies that we do not attempt to explain any single founding but rather the aggregate number of foundings that occur in an industry in a certain period in a certain country according to the organizational ecology theory the population density i e the total number of organizations in a population is the major environmental factor that affects the founding rate through two processes initially when the density is low each founding eases new foundings because the simple prevalence of a form tends to give it legitimacy thereby spurring imitations the training ground for qualified personnel grows and the supporting networks are widened and strengthened the legitimation process does not grow forever once enough organizations of a certain kind exist legitimation attains a ceiling as the number of organizations increases the second process becomes dominant the competition for resources raw material personnel customers capital grows leading to a negative relationship between the density and the founding rate everything else being equal thus the founding rate declines as the number of organizations increases once a threshold is reached the major hypothesis that is tested here is that the population density has an inverted u shaped effect on the founding rate of venture capital organizations in addition the effect that the venture capital firms of the three countries have on each other is studied two populations are said to interact when the populations affect each other s growth rate but the interaction need not be symmetrical the second hypothesis tested in this study is that populations in different countries have a positive effect on each other and not a competitive effect because the legitimating effect does not halt at geographical borders yet the competition for resources capital people deals among geographically different populations is limited in this industry this study is valuable because until now the existing ecological studies focus on long established industries testing the theory in a young industry that emerged only in the seventies in europe has merits in its own right because the technological progress after the second world war has altered the organizational environment tremendously the communication and transportation revolutions may have especially influenced the way in which organizations interact with each other and with the environment the venture capital firms are furthermore special in the way they are organized with the dual structure of management company and investment fund s if the theory holds in this young industry important additional evidence will be given that the theory is truly applicable to populations of all types in any time period and in any society carroll 1988 p 18 finally this study extends the theory by giving evidence on how industries in different countries may interact upon each other we show empirically that the major factor that influences the overall founding rate in each of the three countries is the density of the industry i e the number of organizations that already exist in the industry this confirms the population ecology theory when the density is low adding a new organization to the industry raises the probability of a subsequent founding when the density is high the contrary is true the institutional changes considered here such as the establishment of tax transparent legal entities or state guarantees against losses in the netherlands and the establishment of secondary stock markets do not significantly influence the founding rate in any of the three countries moreover the dutch foundings are positively influenced by the british density and the french foundings by the dutch density the british foundings are on the contrary negatively influenced by the dutch density the competitive effects between the netherlands and the u k are thus more important than initially thought the relationship between the density and the founding rate is the strongest most consistent and most significant relationship found in this study thus the number of organizations that already exist in an industry is very important in explaining the founding of organizations apart from for example the personality of the entrepreneur or from the networks in which he or she is involved this indicates that when trying to explain the founding of organizations the industry structure and more specifically the number of organizations that exist at the moment of the founding cannot be ignored

the ups and downs of capitalism ben bernanke is a leading macroeconomist who has contributed extensively to the literature on business cycles monetary policy the role of financial markets in economic fluctuations inflation targeting and the economics of the great depression he is one of the six economists who form the nber business cycle dating committee a group that determines the dates of recessions in the us in this article interview professor bernanke discusses issues relating to the great depression of the 1930s and problems relating to inflation in the latter half of the twentieth century

are choice experiments incentive compatible a test with quality differentiated beef steaks this study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions we test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes in general hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef steaks than nonhypothetical responses thus hypothetical choices overestimate total willingness to pay for beef steaks however marginal willingness to pay for a change in steak quality is in general not statistically different across hypothetical and actual payment settings

financing high technology startups in belgium an explorative study the results of an explorative study on the financing of 18 high technology belgian startups are reported on a counts basis the most important sources of financing at the startup are the entrepreneurs and the banks but the sources that provide the largest amounts of funds are the venture capital companies and private investors private investors and venture capitalists have a complementary role with the former investing mostly at the startup and the latter financing the early growth the role of the government universities and other companies is limited

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

effects of inward investment on outward investment the venture capital industry worldwide 1985 2007 we identify inward investment as an important impetus to outward investment supplemental to the impetuses depicted in conventional internationalization frameworks by incorporating both the spillover and competition effects of foreign entrants we develop an integrated framework of the inward outward investment relationship for different investment modes and different home country and host country pairs our analysis of venture capital vc investments worldwide from 1985 to 2007 shows a positive spillover effect on outward investment for inward co investments and a negative competition effect on outward investment for inward standalone investments we find the strongest effects when the host country is a laggard in the vc industry and the home country is a leader

the macroeconomics of the great depression a comparative approach recently research on the causes of the great depression has shifted from a heavy emphasis on events in the united states to a broader more comparative approach that examines the interwar experiences of many countries simultaneously in this lecture i survey the current state of our knowledge about the depression from a comparative perspective on the aggregate demand side of the economy comparative analysis has greatly strengthened the empirical case for monetary shocks as a major driving force of the depression an interesting possibility suggested by this analysis is that the worldwide monetary collapse that began in 1931 may be interpreted as a jump from one nash equilibrium to another on the aggregate supply side comparative empirical studies provide support for both induced financial crisis and sticky nominal wages as mechanisms by which nominal shocks had real effects still unresolved is why nominal wages did not adjust more quickly in the face of mass unemployment this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

public versus private venture capital seeding or crowding out a pan european analysis abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between public and private sources of venture capital in europe and the development of the industry controlling for characteristics of the legal systems in 15 european countries over the period 1990 1996 large public participation is correlated with smaller vc industries but analyses do not support the view that public venture capitalists are acting to seed the industry or that are they crowd out private funds on the contrary public involvement seems to cause greater amounts of money to be invested in the industry as a whole we argue that the effects of public intervention whatever the motives are real and probably result from demonstrating sanctioning the social merit of venture capital and from signaling an enduring commitment to it

determinants of required return in venture capital investments a five country study abstract using two complementary theoretical perspectives we develop hypotheses regarding the determinants of the return required by venture capitalists and test them on a sample of over 200 venture capital companies vccs located in five countries consistent with resource based theory we find that early stage specialists require a significantly higher return than other vccs when investing in later stage ventures consistent with financial theory we find that acquisition buyout specialists require a significantly lower return than other vccs when investing in expansion companies furthermore in comparison to specialists highly stage diversified vccs require a significantly higher return for early stage investments independent vccs require a higher rate of return than captive or public vccs in general higher required returns are associated with vccs who provide more intensity of involvement have shorter expected holding period of the investment and being located in the us or uk in comparison to those in france belgium and the netherlands

changes in uk monetary policy rules and discretion in practice abstract in october 1992 following sterling s departure from the exchange rate mechanism britain adopted a new framework for monetary policy that comprised two components first an explicit target for inflation and second institutional changes designed to give greater influence to the bank of england by increasing the transparency and openness of the process by which interest rates are set this paper analyses those changes from the perspective of the debate on rules versus discretion and argues that an appropriate design of institutional arrangements can provide incentives for central bankers to pursue the first best state contingent monetary policy

inflation forecasts and monetary policy proposals for inflation targeting as a strategy for monetary policy leave open the important operational question of how to determine whether current policies are consistent with the long run inflation target an interesting possibility is that the central bank might target current private sector forecasts of inflation either those made explicitly by professional forecasters or those implicit in asset prices we address the issue of existence and uniqueness of rational expectations equilibria when the central bank uses private sector forecasts as a guide to policy actions in a dynamic model which incorporates both sluggish price adjustment and shocks to aggregate demand and aggregate supply we show that strict targeting of inflation forecasts is typically inconsistent with the existence of rational expectations equilibrium and that policies approximating strict inflation forecast targeting are likely to have undesirable properties we also show that economies with more general forecast based policy rules are particularly susceptible to indeterminacy of rational expectations equilibria we conclude that although private sector forecasts may contain information useful to the central bank ultimately the monetary authorities must rely on an explicit structural model of the economy to guide their policy decisions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

golden fetters the gold standard and the great depression barry eichengreen oxford university press new york 1992 pp xix 448 39 95

knowledge transfer capacity and its implications for the theory of the multinational corporation this study updates and extends research on foreign entry modes by examining the impacts of knowledge transfer capacity and knowledge tacitness research on international corporate expansion has long emphasized that deploying intangible knowledge based assets is required for successful international expansion more recently research from a knowledge based perspective has addressed the role of tacitness in constraining a firm s ability to transfer knowledge internationally we combine these perspectives to describe how knowledge tacitness affects the relative suitability of four archetypal entry modes exporting licensing establishing an alliance and wholly owned entry we then examine and develop conceptually a seldom studied firm characteristic knowledge transfer capacity we offer predictions that describe the combined effects of knowledge tacitness and transfer capacity on entry mode choice we distinguish between the transfer capacity of the organization that develops knowledge source transfer capacity and that of the organization that seeks to access that knowledge recipient transfer capacity the discussion addresses how our model generalizes to knowledge seeking strategies and to the study of ongoing multinational networks the study enriches and reconciles multiple theoretical perspectives on entry strategy it brings together the study of knowledge characteristics and firm heterogeneity in the theory of the multinational corporation and in international and strategic management more generally journal of international business studies 2003 34 356 373 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400037

the nation in depression t he economic cataclysm of the 1930s was an international phenomenon experienced by countries in all parts of the globe countries as diverse as the united states germany chile and japan all experienced significant depressions in the 1930s thus the title of charles kindleberger s classic book the world in depression 1973 captures an important feature of the great depression these international aspects especially the importance of the gold standard in causing the downturn and transmitting depression from one country to another have been emphasized in recent years in excellent books by peter temin 1989 and barry eichengreen 1992 these books have rightly received widespread attention and have successfully changed the focus of much analysis of the great depression from the united states to the world economy while such a change from american provincialism is surely healthy and warranted adopting an international perspective on the great depression risks losing sight of the many ways in which the u s depression differed in timing and severity from depressions elsewhere more important it may obscure the many uniquely american causes of america s great depression this paper examines the ways in which the u s experience during the 1930s resembled that of other countries in some regards and fundamentally differed in other aspects i also evaluate the evidence on the causes of the great depression in the united states and the sources of the eventual recovery i suggest that the path of american output and unemployment before 1931 can be explained quite well with only domestic factors even after 1931

nominal wage stickiness and aggregate supply in the great depression building on earlier work by eichengreen and sachs we use data for 22 countries to study the role of wage stickiness in propagating the great depression recent research suggests that monetary shocks transmitted internationally by the gold standard were a major cause of the depression accordingly we use money supplies and other aggregate demand shifters as instruments to identify aggregate supply relationships we find that nominal wages adjusted quite slowly to falling prices and that the resulting increases in real wages depressed output these findings leave open the question of why wages were so inertial in the face of extreme labor market conditions

evaluating impacts from noxious facilities including public preferences in current siting mechanisms abstract this paper describes an approach to facility siting that ranks potential sites in terms of their social impacts a contingent choice survey based on paired comparisons is used to construct a utility index to rank sites consistent with predicting results of a hypothetical referendum based on the attributes of the sites the method is likely to be acceptable to public decision makers since it is analogous to site scoring methods that have been commonly used indeed our approach is currently being employed as part of a larger landfill site selection process in the state of rhode island

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

inflation targeting a new framework for monetary policy he world s central bankers and their staffs meet regularly in venues from basle to washington to share ideas and discuss common problems perhaps these frequent meetings help explain why changes in the tactics and strategy of monetary policymaking such as the adoption of money growth targets in the 1970s the intensification of efforts to reduce inflation in the 1980s and the recent push for increased institutional independence for central banks tend to occur in many countries more or less simultaneously whatever their source major changes in the theory and practice of central banking are of great importance for both individual countries and the international economy in this article we discuss a new strategy for monetary policy known as inflation targeting which has sparked much interest and debate among central bankers and monetary economists in recent years this approach is characterized as the name suggests by the announcement of official target ranges for the inflation rate at one or more horizons and by explicit acknowledgment that low and stable inflation is the overriding goal of monetary policy other important features of inflation targeting include increased communication with the public about the plans and objectives of the monetary policymakers and in many cases increased accountability of the central bank

emerging strategies in the venture capital industry abstract this article reports a study of the future direction of the venture capital industry by examining the basic strategies and strategic assumptions of a broad sample of venture capital firms there are three main sets of results first the once homogeneous venture capital industry is rapidly dividing into several different strategic groups members of these groups are increasingly distinguishing themselves from other groups on four basic dimensions followed by member firms 1 financial resources equity capital comes from a greater variety of sources five major sources resulting in fundamentally different demands on the mission of the receiving venture capital firm 2 staff resources the way venture capital firms use staff resources particularly regarding investee management assistance is becoming increasingly varied across different groups some firms provide fewer than 2 days per year while others provide up to 450 man days per year per client 3 venture stages while the overall industry retains a primary interest in stage 1 2 and 3 investment specific firms vary considerably in the distribution of investment emphasis across these three stages 4 use of financial resources firms in the industry are becoming increasingly differentiated in the size of minimum investments they make 100 m to 1000 m and in their role as a direct investor versus a broker for institutional funds practicing venture capitalists should make use of this first set of findings in two ways first they may find it useful to compare their firm s orientation along these four strategic dimensions with those of the firm s that comprised this study second they may seek to use these four strategic dimensions as a basis on which they might examine clarify and or redefine the marketing strategy pursued by their firm a second set of results identified three goals and priorities of venture capital firms that have neither changed over time nor across increasingly different strategic groups annualized after tax return on investments of between 25 and 40 remain the most common objective across all firms a 5 to 6 year investment time horizon and a major emphasis on the quality of the management team in evaluating new deals were universal priorities across diverse venture capital firms a third finding in this study was that venture capital firms profess greater certainty about the future direction of the venture capital industry than the direction of their firm the most notable example of this is a strong sense that industry wide rates of return are headed downward yet few senior partners expect their firm to experience this decline practicing venture capitalists may be interested to peruse these results to see what trends are predicted within the venture capital industry by this subsample of that industry second they should consider the finding that industry wide rates of return are headed downward in light of the first two sets of findings to develop their own opinion about the future performance of different strategic groups within the industry it is important to note that the sample of venture capital firms on which this study was based did not include most of the larger older funds some of these funds would be characterized as industry leaders pace setters and innovators the sample provides a solid representation of the broad middle of the venture capital industry and newer entrants into the industry while larger older funds are under represented their impact on future trends and strategies in the industry is captured to some extent in the set of questions about future direction of the venture capital industry finally the emerging strategic groups in the venture capital industry that were identified by this study may be useful information for investors as well as users of venture capital for investors the opportunity to participate in venture capital activity should become more clearly understood and varied basically this study should help investors differentiate the strategic posture of different venture capital firms and funds on four factors rather than simply industry geographic considerations for users of venture capital the results of this study suggest a possibility for multiple options that are both more accessible and more catered to specific needs users of venture capital should find a clearer basis on which to differentiate venture capital firms in terms of venture stage priorities staff utilization orientations sources and uses of financial resources this should make for more informed shopping among different venture capital sources and provide a basis on which to shop for the most compatible firm

preferences for public lands management under competing uses the case of yellowstone national park we examine snowmobile use conflict in yellowstone national park to assess the effect of different winter management policies on heterogeneous visitors welfare using a stated preference choice experiment we quantify welfare changes for snowmobile riders and non riders under different snowmobile restrictions a key determinant of welfare change is visitors willingness to trade off reduced snowmobile access for improved ambient conditions in the park our findings support the notion that welfare losses to snowmobile riders could be offset by welfare gains to non riders but net benefits will depend on the number of riders and non riders and the specifics of the policy

the great crash and the onset of the great depression this paper argues that the collapse of stock prices in october 1929 generated temporary uncertainty about future income which led consumers to forgo purchases of durable goods that the great crash generated uncertainty is evidenced by the decline in surety expressed by contemporary forecasters that this uncertainty affected consumer behavior is shown by the fact that spending on consumer durables declined drastically in late 1929 while spending on perishable goods rose slightly this effect is confirmed by the fact that there is a significant negative relationship between stock market variability and the production of consumer durables in the prewar era

the employment financing nexus evidence from a panel of west german firms the objective of the paper is to investigate the linkage between financial factors and employment decisions of west german firms the underlying model is based upon rational expectations and convex adjustment costs the time series cross section estimates for the period 1989 1994 are obtained using information on individual firms contained in business surveys we find that financial constraints can indeed restrain the level of employment in small firms on the contrary there is no evidence that this result applies to larger firms as well

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

cross border private equity syndication institutional context and learning abstract private equity pe has become an increasingly international phenomenon but there is a lack of research that looks at the process by which pe firms invest across borders we aim to fill this gap in the literature by examining the role of institutional context and organizational learning as determinants of cross border pe syndication we examine these issues by studying the international expansion by later stage uk pe investors into continental europe over the period 1990 to 2006 our results indicate that institutional context in terms of the number of pe firms in the local environment and the presence of investment bankers in the local market and organizational learning in terms of the pe firm s experience in the host country the pe firm s multinational experience and the number of investment managers per portfolio company but not the presence of local offices are significantly related to the use of cross border syndicates implications for theory and practice are suggested

prosperity and depression prosperity and depression are relative concepts today both france and japan are depressed relative to the united states equivalently the united states is prosperous relative to these countries i say these countries are depressed relative to the united states because their output per working age person is 30 percent less than the u s level an interesting and important policy question is why are these countries depressed the answers for these two countries turn out to be very different the united states is prosperous relative to france because the u s intratemporal tax wedge that distorts the trade off between consumption and leisure is much smaller than the french wedge i will show that if france modified its intratemporal tax wedge so that its value was the same as the u s value french welfare in consumption equivalents would increase by 19 percent consumption would have to increase by 19 percent now and in all future periods to achieve as large a welfare gain as that resulting from this tax reform the united states is prosperous relative to japan because production efficiency is higher in the united states in the united states total factor productivity is approximately 20 percent higher than in japan if japan suddenly became as efficient in production as the united states its welfare gain in consumption equivalents would be 39 percent equally interesting and important are big changes over time in relative output per working age person across countries why are new zealand s and switzerland s economies depressed by over 30 percent relative to their 1970 trend corrected levels both of these countries have small populations but depressions are not restricted to small countries japan with its 125 million people is now depressed by 20 percent relative to its 1991 trend corrected level on the prosperity side why are ireland and south korea so prosperous now relative to their 1970 trend corrected levels this lecture is concerned primarily with big international differences among relatively rich industrial countries and changes in these differences over time the countries that receive primary attention all have market economies and healthy well educated populations in the countries considered the variations in aggregate output per working age person are large and reasonably good measures of the factor inputs are available this permits in many cases the identification of the change in policy or the difference in policy that gave rise to prosperity or depression this is in contrast to business cycle theory which provides little guidance to policy except for the important policy implication that a stabilization effort will have either no effect or a perverse effect the output variations studied and analyzed in this lecture are big an order of magnitude larger than the much studied business cycle fluctuations the variations studied however are an order of magnitude smaller than the muchstudied differences between the richest and poorest countries surprisingly only recently have depressions been systematically studied from the perspective of growth theory which is the theory used university of minnesota and federal reserve bank of minneapolis i thank my colleagues at the university of minnesota and the federal reserve bank of minneapolis for helpful discussions and comments in particular i thank tim kehoe ellen mcgrattan and nancy stokey for their help i also thank martin weale and franck portier for providing some british and french tax information used in this lecture thanks also go to sami alpanda and james macgee for research assistance and helpful discussions this lecture draws heavily on collaborative research with fumio hayashi i thank the economic and social research institute cabinet office government of japan and the u s national science foundation for financial support the views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the federal reserve bank of minneapolis or the federal reserve system

the state of the art of environmental valuation with discrete choice experiments abstract this paper provides with a review of the state of the art of environmental valuation with discrete choice experiments dces the growing body of literature on this field serves to emphasize the increasing role that dces are playing in environmental decision making in the last decade the paper attempts to cover the full process of undertaking a choice experiment including survey and experimental design econometric analysis of choice data and welfare analysis the research on this field is found to be intense although many challenges are put forward e g choice task complexity and cognitive effort experimental design preference and scale heterogeneity endogeneity or model uncertainty reviewing the state of the art of dces serves to draw attention to the main challenges that this methodological approach will need to overcome in the coming years and to identify the frontiers in discrete choice analysis

publicly traded venture capital funds implications for institutional fund of funds investors abstract institutional investors supply the bulk of the funds which are used by venture capital investment firms in financing emerging growth companies these investors typically place their funds in a number of venture capital firms thus achieving diversification across a range of investment philosophy geography management industry investment life cycle stage and type of security essentially each institutional investor manages a fund of funds attempting through the principles of portfolio theory to reduce the risk of participating in the venture capital business while retaining the up side potential which was the original source of attraction to the business because most venture capital investment firms are privately held limited partnerships it is very difficult to measure risk adjusted rates of return on these funds on a continuous basis in this paper we use the set of twelve publicly traded venture capital firms as a proxy to develop insight regarding the risk reduction effect of investment in a portfolio of venture capital funds i e a fund of funds measurements of weekly total returns for the shares of these funds are compared with similar returns on a set of comparably sized maximum capital gain mutual funds and the daily return of the s p 500 index a comparison of returns on an individual fund basis as well as a correlation of daily returns of these individual funds were made in order to adjust for any systematic bias resulting from the thin market characteristic of the securities of the firms being observed the scholes williams beta estimation technique was used to reduce the effects of nonsynchronous trading the results indicate that superior returns are realized on such portfolios when compared with portfolios of growth oriented mutual funds and with the s p 500 index this is the case whether the portfolios are equally weighted i e naive or constructed to be mean variant efficient ex ante according to the capital asset pricing model when compared individually more of the venture funds dominated the s p market index than did the mutual funds and by much larger margins when combined in portfolios the venture capital funds demonstrated very low beta coefficients and very low covariance of returns among portfolio components when compared with portfolios of mutual funds to aid in interpreting these results we analyzed the discounts and premia from net asset value on the funds involved and compared them to thompson s findings regarding the contribution of such differences to abnormal returns we found that observed excess returns greatly exceed the level which would be explained by these differences the implications of these results for the practitioner are significant they essentially tell us that while investment in individual venture capital deals is considered to have high risk relative to potential return combinations of deals i e venture capital portfolios were shown to produce superior risk adjusted returns in the market place further these results show that further combining these portfolios into larger portfolios i e funds of funds provides even greater excess returns over the market index thus plausibly explaining the fund of funds approach to venture capital investment taken by many institutional investors while the funds studied are relatively small and are either small business investment companies or business development companies they serve as a useful proxy for the organized venture capital industry despite the fact that the bulk of the funds in the industry are institutionally funded private closely held limited partnerships which do not trade continuously in an open market these results demonstrate to investors the magnitude of the differences in risk adjusted total return between publicly traded venture capital funds and growth oriented mutual funds on an individual fund basis they also demonstrate to investors the power of the fund of funds approach to institutional involvement in the venture capital business because such an approach produces better risk adjusted investment results for the institutional investor it seems to justify a greater flow of capital into the business from more risk averse institutional investment sources this may mean greater access to institutional funds for those seeking to form new venture capital funds for entrepreneurs seeking venture capital funds for their young companies it may also mean a lower potential cost of capital for the financing of business venturing from the viewpoint of public policy makers interested in facilitating the funding of business venturing it may provide insight regarding regulatory issues surrounding taxation and the barriers and incentives which affect venture capital investment

monetary factors in the great depression this paper examines the role of monetary policy in the early stages of the great depression and considers the mechanism whereby this policy may have affected real activity i conclude that the depression was preceded by a dramatic shift towards a highly contractionary monetary policy the economic impact of this policy seems unlikely to have come through the conventional keynesian channels of a shortage of liquidity and high ex ante real interest rates but instead may have operated through unanticipated deflation and after 1930 through the disruption of financial intermediation as a consequence of the banking panics

financing technology based small firms in europe what do we know this paper reviews the evidence on financing technology based small firms tbsfs in europe european tbsfs finance new investments by relying primarily on internal funds due to capital market failures induced by asymmetric information european venture capital has caught up with us venture capital but this is mainly because of the growth in uk venture investments it is unclear whether european venture capital has been able to certify the quality and enhance the growth of funded companies compared with the nasdaq there is little development of trading in high tech stocks in europe the so called new markets established in the 1990s collapsed in the wake of the internet bubble crash public venture capital and research and development r d tax incentives seem to have positively affected high tech firms

venture capital and management led leveraged buy outs a european perspective abstract management and leveraged buy outs became phenomena of the 1980s from beginnings in the u s they quickly traversed the atlantic spreading first to the u k and then throughout europe the venture capital industry has played a crucial role in the development of buy outs in europe particularly in smaller deals in the u k the netherlands and france this paper examines three aspects of the market for venture and development capital funded management led buy outs in europe it provides a framework for analysis of the different levels of development of each country s market it examines performance of u k buy outs and addresses the extent and nature of exits throughout the paper use is made of the extensive database of european buy outs developed by the authors the main conclusions to emerge are as follows european experience can not be compared to that in the u s as a single economy there are important differences between european countries in respect of the level of buy out activity and the extent to which conditions are or will be favourable for the development of such transactions conceptually a buy out market may be considered as requiring three main factors to be present if it is to develop the generation of buy out opportunities the infrastructure to complete a transaction and opportunities for the investors in a buy out to realise their gains these broad groups may be further sub divided the generation of opportunities will be heavily influenced by attitudes to entrepreneurial risk and hence willingness of managers to buy the ownership structure of industry and hence the generation of entities which are for sale and the state of development of mergers and acquisition markets the infrastructure to complete transactions includes sources of funding both in respect of venture capital availability and the ability of banks to fund transactions the nature of legal and taxation regimes and the existence of intermediaries and advisors who can both identify and negotiate buy outs the existence of suitable exit routes comprises stock market flotation sale to another group and recapitalisation possibly through a secondary buy out many of these factors are similar to the conditions necessary for venture capital deals to develop the generation of entities for sale may take various forms with succession issues in family firms divestment of unwanted divisions privatization of public sector activities and going privates of companies quoted on a stock market being the most important this framework was used to analyze european buy out markets through a combination of interview and desk research the evidence shows that the most highly developed buy out markets and those with the greatest short term potential are not necessarily to be found in the largest economies u s investors who turn towards europe to develop their markets at a time when the u s buy out market is experiencing a downturn and european investors seeking to broaden their activities need to be aware of these differences as in comparable studies in the u s u k lbos on the evidence from our survey of 182 buyouts on average produce performance improvements u k lbos appear to undertake a greater level of new product development and asset purchase after buy out than do their counterparts in the u s and have placed less emphasis on asset disposals than u s lbos managers buying out frequently tightened up their control of working capital the results of our survey indicate support for both the entrepreneurial and agency cost reduction perspectives about buy outs with the former perhaps being somewhat more in evidence exit routes are an important aspect of the buy out market but evidence presented here indicates that buy outs are unlikely to exit in the way in which they originally envisaged in particular buy outs that initially were aiming for flotation on a secondary tier stock market have almost invariably been sold to third parties

the first year of the eurosystem inflation targeting or not this paper is a brief evaluation of the eurosystem s monetary policy regime after its first year in particular of the extent to which it is similar to inflation targeting as practiced by an increasing number of central banks i examine the eurosystem s goals framework for monetary policy decisions and communication with outsiders criteria for evaluation are whether the goals are unambiguous and appropriate whether the decision framework is efficient in collecting and processing information and reaching decisions that are appropriate relative to the goals and whether the communication is effective in motivating decisions simplifying external evaluation and thereby improving transparency and accountability i also consider whether the actual instrument setting has been appropriate given the informaion available at the times of decision

generating electricity with forest biomass consistency and payment timeframe effects in choice experiments abstract this paper presents a choice experiment analyzing the consumers preferences towards a policy for replacing conventional electricity with electricity generated from forest biomass the results show that consumers specially prefer the effects related to the lower risk of forest fires and to the decrease in pressure on non renewable resources the article also presents a methodological test in relation to the payment timeframe and its effect on marginal willingness to pay and consistency of responses using choice experiments the most frequent and realistic payments are associated with lower presence of inconsistent responses finally we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no effects of payment timeframe on marginal willingness to pay

venture capital in western europe abstract western europe is in the process of an entrepreneurial renaissance an integral part of this renaissance is the emergence of a venture capital industry in europe although the venture capital institution in europe is very much modeled along the lines of its american counterpart it is significantly smaller in size both in absolute terms as well as in relation to the size of the economy substantial differences in venture capital activity are also found to exist within europe it is most prevaient in the united kingdom france and netherlands surprisingly it is less developed in west germany particularly given the size of this country s economy venture capital in western europe shares some characteristics with that in the united states its investment focus is in high technology and syndication between funds is common unlike the united states however banks are a major source of venture capital funds surprisingly in spite of the economic integration to which the european community aspires the mobility of venture capital across national boundaries is low the authors try to explain differences in venture capital activity in several countries of the european community by examining four aspects of each country s environment in particular the size of the technology sector the cultural influence on entrepreneurial risk taking the government s policy to stimulate risk capital and entrepreneurship and finally the ability of venture backed firms to turn to publicly traded markets as a source of future financing one common factor shared by the three countries with the highest level of venture capital activity is the presence of a secondary stock market geared to the needs of a small relatively new venture contemplating an initial public offering the unlisted securities market in the united kingdom the seconde marche in france and the parallel market in the netherlands serve these needs and provide the mechanism by which venture capitalists can liquidate their equity position after the venture is quoted on these financial markets to the venture it provides access to public financing for funding continued growth in the united kingdom and netherlands the business enterprise has historically been regarded as a tradeable entity and hence the concept of ownership by passive investors is well accepted in france where this is a relatively recent phenomenon the government has played a strong role in stimulating an interest in stock market investing in general it has also created some extremely attractive fiscal incentives for investors in venture capital funds

from the editors what makes a study sufficiently international journal of international business studies 2008 39 180 183 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400351 from the flow of submissions that arrive on the desk of the jibs editors it appears that the issue of what makes a study sufficiently international to be of potential interest to jibs and its readership is perhaps not so obvious to some contributors to the journal one of the top reasons for desk rejection is a misunderstanding by authors of jibs s position on what studies are sufficiently international some leading journals in the business and management domain such as academy of management journal amj consider studies to be sufficiently international if they either involve a non us setting or a non us co author this is definitely not the case in jibs in the following discussion which includes specific examples we clarify what makes a study sufficiently international for jibs and provide advice to help authors to determine in advance the suitability of their potential submissions to jibs as the leading journal in international business ib in short jibs entertains only submissions that are intrinsically international in nature as noted in the jibs statement of editorial policy that can be found on http www palgrave journals com jibs jibs statement html