analysing the interactions between renewable energy promotion and energy efficiency support schemes the impact of different instruments and design elements abstract co2 emissions reduction renewable energy deployment and energy efficiency are three main energy environmental goals particularly in europe their relevance has led to the implementation of support schemes in these realms their coexistence may lead to overlaps synergies and conflicts between them the aim of this paper is to analyse the interactions between energy efficiency measures and renewable energy promotion whereas previous analyses have focused on the interactions between emissions trading schemes ets and energy efficiency measures and ets and renewable energy promotion schemes furthermore the analysis in this paper transcends the certificate debate i e tradable green and white certificates and considers other instruments particularly feed in tariffs for renewable electricity the goal is to identify positive and negative interactions between energy efficiency and renewable electricity promotion and to assess whether the choice of specific instruments and design elements within those instruments affects the results of the interactions

a lack of insight do venture capitalists really understand their own decision process abstract what decision criteria do venture capitalists vcs use to make their investment decisions this question has received much attention within entrepreneurship literature i e wells 1974 poindexter 1976 tyebjee and bruno 1984 macmillan seigel and subba narasimha 1985 macmillan zeman and subba narasimha 1987 robinson 1987 timmons et al 1987 sandberg schweiger and hofer 1988 hall and hofer 1993 zacharakis and meyer 1995 for a number of reasons first vc backed ventures achieve a higher survival rate than non vc backed businesses kunkel and hofer 1990 sandberg 1986 timmons 1994 second a better understanding of the decision process may lead to even better survival rates finally entrepreneurs seeking venture funding benefit if they understand what factors are most important to the vc although past research has greatly contributed to our understanding of the decision it may be biased and somewhat misleading the majority of past studies rely on post hoc methodologies e g interviews and surveys to capture the decision process post hoc methods assume that vcs can accurately relate their own decision processes but studies from cognitive psychology suggest that people in particular experts are poor at introspecting introspection is subject to rationalization and post hoc recall biases using social judgment theory and the associated lens model as a framework the current study investigates how well vcs introspect about their own decision process and by extension whether the past research efforts are biased the current research uses policy capturing a real time method common in cognitive psychology to capture the vc s actual theories in use versus their espoused theories hitt and tyler 1991 policy capturing requires that vcs make a series of real time decisions based on various information factors regression analysis of each vcs decision captures how important each of the information factors is to her his actual decision process after the vcs make their decisions they provided a weighting of how they believe they used the information factors comparing the captured decision policies to stated decision policies provides a measure of vc insight the findings suggest that vcs are not good at introspecting about their own decision process even within the confines of a controlled experiment which greatly reduces the amount of information considered vcs lacked strong understanding of how they made decisions most decision makers would like to have all relevant information available for their decision however as more information becomes available insight diminishes finally this study finds that vcs are very consistent in their decision process even though they do not necessarily understand how they make their decisions vcs face a plethora of information when making an investment decision i e business plan outside consultants due diligence etc it may be difficult for vcs to truly understand their intuitive decision process because of all the noise caused by this information overload this lack of systematic understanding impedes learning vcs cannot make accurate adjustments to their evaluation process if they do not truly understand it therefore vcs may suffer from a systematic bias that impedes the performance of their investment portfolio the methodology used in this experiment can be modified and used as a training tool for active vcs in addition the consistent nature of vc decision making even if they do not have a strong understanding of that process is favorable to the development of decision aides decision aides can minimize the danger of salient information e g the lead entrepreneur is a winner clouding the vc s judgment past research also needs to be interpreted in a new light although vcs undoubtedly use some of the information cited in past studies the relative importance of that information needs to be reevaluated vcs may not for instance rely most on the background of the entrepreneurial team in addition it is likely that the past studies provide more information factors than vcs actually use people have a tendency to overstate the information they believe they relied upon and to use far less information typically three to seven factors to make a decision than they actually think they use the methodology used in this experiment has the potential to identify the more relevant information factors cited in previous work even though vcs are experts in the new venture funding realm their decision process has room for improvement almost 40 of all backed ventures fail to provide a return to the vc considering the billions invested each year a modest improvement in the failure rate can have a substantial impact on venture portfolio returns that improvement starts by better understanding the decision process this study is a step in that direction

trade offs in the investment decisons of european venture capitalists abstract previous studies of venture capital investment criteria which have tended to utilize traditional likert scaled survey methods have produced some general findings which indicate that the human factor is of utmost importance however virtually all of these studies have been undertaken with u s based venture capitalists in addition the studies have generally been exploratory and have assumed a single hierarchy of decision criteria in all cases and across all venture capitalists we do not accept that this is valid therefore our study tested this assumption by investigating the trade offs made by venture capitalists in europe thirty five investment criteria were identified from the literature and from experts in the field and a questionnaire was developed that required the venture capitalist to make 53 pairwise trade offs with multiple levels seventy three venture capitalists from across europe were interviewed and completed the questionnaire conjoint analysis was used to compute relative rankings and overall rankings were computed to provide some general insight into the overall importance of the various criteria after this cluster analysis was used to identify different decision groupings the trade offs were randomized in the questionnaire but for descriptive purposes fall into the following groupings financial product market strategic competitive fund management team management competence and deal all five management team criteria as opposed to management competence criteria were ranked among the first seven product market criteria appeared to be only moderately important and fund and deal criteria were at the bottom of the rankings overall we conclude that the venture capitalists interviewed would as a group prefer to select an opportunity that offers a good management team and reasonable financial and product market characteristics even if the opportunity does not meet the overall fund and deal requirements it appears quite logically that without the correct management team and a reasonable idea good financials are generally meaningless because they will never be achieved cluster analysis identified three groupings of venture capitalists those primarily concerned with investing nationally those who focus solely upon the deal and those mainstream investors who consistently and instinctively rank the five management team criteria at the top of their list however there was no evident country bias a conclusion that is sustained if the countries are grouped by physical proximity northern versus southern europe or by size of the local venture capital community a surrogate for experience moreover there was no relationship to the scale of the fund the typical round of financing or the apparent network the article concludes by outlining the implications of the study for venture capitalists entrepreneurs and the research community

agency relationships in family firms theory and evidence does owner management necessarily eliminate the agency costs of ownership drawing on agency literature and on the economic theory of the household we argue that private ownership and owner management expose privately held owner managed firms to agency threats ignored by jensen s and meckling s 1976 agency model private ownership and owner management not only reduce the effectiveness of external control mechanisms they also expose firms to a self control problem created by incentives that cause owners to take actions which harm themselves as well as those around them jensen 1994 p 43 thus shareholders have incentive to invest resources in curbing both managerialand owner opportunism we extend this thesis to the domain of the family firm after developing hypotheses which describe how family dynamics and specifically altruism exacerbate agency problems experienced by these privately held owner managed firms we use data obtained from a large scale survey of family businesses to field test our hypotheses and find evidence which suggests support for our proposed theory finally we discuss the implications of our theory for research on family and other types of privately held owner managed firms

a unified systems perspective of family firm performance abstract theory and practice indicate that in family influenced firms the interaction of the family unit the business entity and individual family members create unique systemic conditions and constituencies that impact the performance outcomes of the family business social system habbershon and williams fam bus rev 12 1999 1 have suggested that these unique systemic family influences can be captured through an analysis of the resources and capabilities of the organization in this paper we pursue their line of thinking and more specifically examine the systemic relationship of resources and capabilities as a source of advantage or constraint to the performance outcomes for family influenced firms the idiosyncratic firm level bundle of resources and capabilities resulting from the systems interactions are referred to as the familiness of the firm wealth creating performance for family influenced firms is a function of the distinctive familiness generated by the family business system the performance model focuses on a particular subset of family influenced firms whose performance goal is transgenerational wealth and wealth creation potential we refer to those families that meet this premise as enterprising families we develop a unified systems model of performance that links the resources and capabilities generated in the enterprising families system with their potential for transgenerational wealth creation

the fallacy of only the strong survive the effects of extrinsic motivation on the persistence decisions for under performing firms abstract under performing firms persist even though existing theoretical perspectives indicate that they should be selected out of the market building upon threshold theory gimeno j folta t cooper a woo c 1997 survival of the fittest entrepreneurial human capital and the persistence of underperforming firms administrative science quarterly 42 750 783 and using staw s staw b m 1981 the escalation of commitment to a course of action academy of management review 6 4 577 587 theoretical model of commitment to a course of action we explore and test the factors that lead entrepreneurs to persist with under performing firms we found environmental munificence personal investment personal options previous organizational success and perceived collective efficacy impact the decision to persist with an under performing firm in addition extrinsic motivation moderates those relationships this research adds to the growing literature on highly persistent under performing firms and complements and extends threshold theory

on equilibrium player ordering in dynamic team contests we study equilibrium player ordering in a dynamic all pay contest between two teams the contest lasts two periods and each team consists of two players who perform in different periods on behalf of their teams the team with the higher aggregate output wins the prize which is a public good to its players each team has one stronger player and one weaker player and the two teams can differ in their values of the prize the teams maximize their winning odds by strategically assigning their players to different periods we find that when the intrateam heterogeneity in player ability is not excessive the teams would allocate their stronger players to the late positions as the anchormen when both the intrateam ability gap and interteam heterogeneity in teams values become excessively large the team with high value always places its stronger player in the early position who will place a large bid to preempt late competition jel c7 d7 d8

price elasticity of demand in the epex spot market for electricity new empirical evidence this paper provides estimates for the price elasticity of demand in the european power exchange epex day ahead market for electricity an institutional change in the year 2010 allows us to use wind speed as an instrumental variable for hourly spot market prices in order to deal with potential endogeneity problems the average price elasticity of demand covering the years 2010 2014 is about 0 43 and our results point to a decline in its absolute value over time

fast growing small entrepreneurial firms and their venture capital backers an applied principal agent analysis first the empirical background of the u k venture capital industry is developed using a panel of major u k venture capital funds over the period 1988 92 then a framework for applied principal agent analysis is developed focusing on risk management and information under risk management it explores attitude to risk risk sharing and bearing and the effects of risk bearing on effort under information handling it explores information systems information asymmetries between investor venture capitalist and investee entrepreneur and ways of attenuating them and information variance and costs finally the contract between investor and investee is seen as a device for trading risk and information the implications of this trading for risk bearing effort and efficiency are explored the whole analysis is supported by a detailed case study which reflects current practice in the u k venture capital industry the evidence provides striking confirmation of the applicability of the principal agent model to the venture capital financing of hightech ventures

private equity investment decisions in family firms the role of human resources and agency costs abstract this study examines decision making criteria that are employed by private equity pe investors selecting family firms hypotheses test the likelihood of investment based on family firm characteristics findings show that pe professionals take into account family specific criteria including human resources and opportunities to reduce agency costs furthermore pe professionals prefer family firms that are already professionalized this research contributes to the family firm literature on both a theoretical and a methodological level exploring nonfamily succession routes and employing techniques conjoint analysis for data collection and multilevel models for data analysis that have seldom been used in this context

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

why do entrepreneurs use franchising as a financial tool an agency explanation abstract when and why one type of entrepreneur franchisor attracts to its ventures another type of entrepreneur franchisees instead of passive investors is a central concern in entrepreneurship literature based on the informativeness principle of the principal agent model we claim that franchisees are not such an expensive financial tool as has been argued in the literature because their compensation return is more efficiently designed it directly depends on variables which are under franchisees control we therefore link agency and financial explanations for franchising most of our findings show that once the agency argument is controlled for the higher the cost of alternative funds for the franchisor estimated through different variables the more the franchisor will rely on expansion through franchising as opposed to company ownership we interpret this as a clue that franchising is also used as a financial capital source

hybrid conjoint analysis an estimation probe in new venture decisions abstract how venture capitalists select start ups for financing has been an interesting topic for many researchers and practitioners the underlying assumption is that people who make money investing in new businesses by assessing the proposals should be experienced enough to distinguish losers from winners our research study tested three models self explicated conjoint and a hybrid comprising the two previous ones conjoint in order to find out 1 if these models could be applied to venture capital decision making and if so 2 to demonstrate the potential of conjoint analysis as a practical research method 3 to test whether or not the characteristics of the entrepreneur the product and the market replicate the venture capital decision this research study confirms what normative literature on decision making emphasizes that in the first stage of an evaluation screening venture capitalists focus on a small subset of criteria in a non compensatory process i e an unacceptable value on one criterion cannot be offset by a high value of another one the important criteria in this phase appear to be the entrepreneur s experience and the existence of a prototype for some decision makers or unique features of the product for others the screening step is more judgemental than analytic in a second stage the evaluation phase however venture capitalists end a detailed examination due diligence process by choosing the most preferred ventures through processes approximating compensatory rules that is a low but acceptable value on one criterion can be compensated by a high value on another the most important criteria identified by the research in this second stage are criteria found in the previous stage product gross profit margin and patent our research demonstrates agreement among venture capitalists in terms of one criterion to evaluate research proposals managerial experience as to the rest of the attributes tested there was variation in the weights assigned to them the findings of this pilot study also confirm the applicability of conjoint analysis as a research method in venture capital decision the approach helps shed light on the decision rules applied and permits the testing of previously researched criteria for predictive validity the method has the advantage of retaining individual preferences and clustering them around venture capitalists demographic and psychographic backgrounds i e years of experience type of education life style and the like or other types of information such as venture fund policies size of the investment type of industry etc the major implication of the study for entrepreneurs is the importance of previous experience in the industry where they expect to develop their ventures and a deep knowledge of the product advantages over competition technical production and cost feasibility they are to produce and market these are the factors that have the greatest influence on venture capitalists evaluation of such projects

new venture strategy and profitability a venture capitalist s assessment abstract this study uses theoretically justified criteria from the industrial organization io strategy literature and applies it to a new domain namely venture capitalists decision making specifically the study investigates the types of information venture capitalists utilize when evaluating new ventures and how venture capitalists use this information to assess likely new venture profitability in the interest of advancing our understanding of the decision making policies of venture capitalists this study addresses many of the limitations of previous research a review of io research suggests important relationships between a number of strategy variables and new venture profitability some of the relationships proposed by io strategy research are contingent in nature the strategy variables and their relationships with profitability are investigated in the domain of venture capitalists decision making individual and aggregate decision making analyses identified those strategy variables criteria venture capitalists utilize in assessing likely new venture profitability namely timing key success factor stability lead time competitive rivalry educational capability industry related competence timing key success factor stability interaction timing lead time interaction and timing educational capability interaction on average the most important criterion for venture capitalists in their assessment of profitability is industry related competence the second tier of importance is competitive rivalry timing and educational capability the third tier of importance is lead time key success factor stability and timing lead time interaction other interactions are less important therefore while venture capitalists use contingent decision policies main effects dominate if venture capitalists use a reported 8 to 12 minutes on average to evaluate a business plan sandberg 1986 then this study s findings may help the inexperienced venture capitalist allocate time towards assessing those attributes of primary importance although more complex relationships exist between the attributes the inexperienced venture capitalist can take comfort from this study s findings that main effects dominant amongst senior venture capitalists senior venture capitalists may take less comfort from their importance placed on main effects in light of research from io which suggests the importance of contingent relationships the results may also have practical application towards training how should venture capital firms train their new employees should venture capital firms rely solely on experienced venture capitalists lecturing the inexperienced on the criteria they use in assessing a new venture proposal like most decision makers venture capitalists have limited insight into their assessments and venture capital firms need to be aware of the gap between espoused policies and policies in use the information being taught needs to be supplemented with venture capitalists decision making research that investigates decision policies in use such as this study venture capitalist training could also involve experiential learning in conjunction with cognitive feedback about the decision policies used to accelerate the learning process experiential learning using cognitive feedback maximizes industry related learning while minimizing the cost of inexperienced decisions for the entrepreneur seeking capital this increased understanding of venture capitalists decision making may help them better target their business plans and presentations at those criteria venture capitalists find most critical to the profitability of a new venture

a model of venture capitalist investment activity the paper describes the activities of venture capitalists as an orderly process involving five sequential steps these are 1 deal origination the processes by which deals enter into consideration as investment prospects 2 deal screening a delineation of key policy variables which delimit investment prospects to a manageable few for in depth evaluation 3 deal evaluation the assessment of perceived risk and expected return on the basis of a weighting of several characteristics of the prospective venture and the decision whether or not to invest as determined by the relative levels of perceived risk and expected return 4 deal structuring the negotiation of the price of the deal namely the equity relinquished to the investor and the covenants which limit the risk of the investor 5 post investment activities the assistance to the venture in the areas of recruiting key executives strategic planning locating expansion financing and orchestrating a merger acquisition or public offering 41 venture capitalists provided data on a total of 90 deals which had received serious consideration in their firms the questionnaire measured the mechanism of initial contact between venture capitalist and entrepreneur the venture s industry the stage of financing and product development ratings of the venture on 23 characteristics an assessment of the potential return and perceived risk and the decision vis i vis whether to invest the modal venture represented in the database was a start up in the electronics industry with a production capability in place and seeking 1 million median in outside financing there is a high degree of cross referrals between venture capitalists particularly for the purposes of locating co investors factor analysis reduced the 23 characteristics of the deal to five underlying dimensions namely 1 market attractiveness size growth and access to customers 2 product differentiation uniqueness patents technical edge profit margin 3 managerial capabilities skills in marketing management finance and the references of the entrepreneur 4 environmental threat resistance technology life cycle barriers to competitive entry insensitivity to business cycles and down side risk protection 5 cash out potential future opportunities to realize capital gains by merger acquisition or public offering the results of regression analyses showed expected return to be determined by market attractiveness and product differentiation r2 0 22 perceived risk is determined by managerial capabilities and environmental threat resistance r2 0 33 finally a discriminant analysis correctly predicted in 89 4 of the cases whether or not a venture capitalist was willing to commit funds to the deal on the basis of the expected return and perceived risk the reactions of seven venture capitalists who reviewed the model s specification were used to test its validity

the potential of actuarial decision models abstract venture capitalists vcs are considered experts in identifying high potential new ventures gazelles vc backed ventures survive at a much higher rate than those ventures backed by other sources kunkel and hofer 1991 sandberg 1986 timmons 1994 thus the vc decision process has received tremendous attention within the entrepreneurship literature nonetheless vc backed firms still fail at a surprisingly high rate 20 moreover another 20 of the vc s portfolio fails to provide any return to the vc therefore there is room for improvement in the vc investment process the three staged investment process often begins with venture screening first vcs screen the hundreds of proposals they receive to assess which deserve further consideration those ventures that survive the initial stage are then subjected to extensive due diligence finally the vc and entrepreneur negotiate terms of the investment considering the amount of time that due diligence and negotiation of terms may take it is imperative that vcs minimize their efforts during screening so that only those ventures with the most potential proceed to the next stage yet at the same time the screening process should also be careful not to eliminate gazelles prematurely vcs are in a quandary how can they efficiently screen venture proposals without unduly rejecting high potential investments the answer may be to use actuarial decision aides to assist in the screening process actuarial decision aides are models that decompose a decision into component parts or cues and recombine those cues to predict the potential outcome for example an actuarial model about the vc decision might decompose a venture proposal into decisions about the entrepreneurial team the product the market etc the sub component decisions are than recombined to reach an overall assessment of the venture s potential such models have been developed in a number of decision domains e g bank lending psychological evaluations etc and been found to be very robust specifically these models often outperform the very experts that they are meant to mimic the current study had 53 practicing vcs participate in a policy capturing experiment the participants examined 50 ventures and judged each venture s success potential would the venture ultimately succeed or fail likewise identical information about each venture was input into two different types of actuarial models one actuarial model a bootstrap model used information factors that vcs had identified as being most important to making a good investment decision the second actuarial model was derived by roure and keeley 1990 the roure and keeley model best distinguished between success and failure in a study of 36 high technology ventures the bootstrap model outperformed all but one participating vc he achieved the same accuracy rate as the bootstrap model the roure and keely model although less successful than the bootstrap model outperformed over half of the participating vcs the implications of this study are that properly developed actuarial models may be successful screening decision aides the success of the actuarial models may be attributed to their consistency across different proposals and time the models always weight the information cues the same vcs as are all human decision makers may often be biased by differing salient information cues that cause them to misinterpret or ignore other important cues for example a vc may overlook product weaknesses if s he is familiar with the entrepreneur putting forth a particular proposal although the current study developed a generalized actuarial model each vc firm could create screening models that fit it s particular decision criteria the models could then be used by junior associates or lower level employees to perform an initial screen of received venture proposals thereby freeing senior associates time

financial structure and the growing small firm theoretical underpinning and current evidence this paper introduces a special issue of small business economics on financing and small firm dynamics it establishes a general underpinning for the analysis of small firm financing over time this appeals to the control theoretic literature and permits the specification of master trajectories of key variables over time like output debt dividend and capital two trajectories for cheap debt and cheap equity respectively illustrate this type of analysis showing how financial structure can vary over time involving phases of growth consolidation and stationarity from this perspective six papers on small firm dynamics and finance are reviewed issues addressed include credit constraints funding shortages wealth as collateral financial structure target income modelling of start up and bank lending during financial liberalisation

singapore venture capitalists vcs investment evaluation criteria a reexamination the venture capital vc industry in singapore is of recent origin however funds under management in singapore have grown from s 45 million in 1983 to s 7 86 billion in 1996 these developments together with the recent announcement of government s vision of singapore becoming a hub for venture capital in the region provide an opportunity for an examination of the venture capital industry in singapore the vc industry originated in the western hemisphere in response to the need for risk capital for high technology industries in the light of the differences in investment opportunities around singapore and the nature of industrial developments in south east asia in general the authors anticipated that the investment criteria employed by venture capital firms vcs in singapore would differ the results however reveal that criteria adopted by singapore vcs are not very different from those adopted by vcs in other countries including u s the results also confirm that the entrepreneur s characteristics or the top management s capabilities are seen as being primary indicators of the venture s potential further examination of vcs investment process revealed that the investment criteria adopted by successful vcs were no different from those adopted by less successful vcs this confirms that investment selection is a multi stage process wherein venture assessment is only one of the steps in this process before vcs evaluate a venture they screen investment proposals based on their investment preferences or investment strategies vcs in our sample had definite ideas about where to invest and in what types of firms how do vcs select appropriate investment strategies however has not been adequately dealt in the literature and is a fitting subject for further studies

indirect double regulation and the carbon etss linking the case of coal fired generation in the eu and china abstract double regulation of carbon emissions is a key policy concern in the context of climate change mitigation the existing literature on double regulation in an emissions trading system ets context has largely focused on the direct type when e g an ets and a carbon tax cover the same entity and has not yet discussed the indirect type when e g the ets and carbon tax cover two related entities in the same production consumption chain this paper seeks to contribute to the literature by identifying indirect double regulation ets tax on the coal fired generation in the eu and china specifically we scrutinized legal documents associated with the coal fired power and further presented the quantitative evidence of double carbon costs from the law economics analysis of indirect double regulation we derived implications of indirect double regulation for the abatement of coal fired power sector in its own jurisdiction and after a hypothetic linkage between the eu ets and chinese national ets for its linked partner in response policy suggestions are provided to mitigate potential competitive distortions but should differentiate distortions by sources

white certificates for energy efficiency improvement with energy taxes a theoretical economic model in this paper we analyze interactions of two energy policy instruments namely a white certificates whc scheme as an innovative policy instrument for energy efficiency improvement and energy taxation these policy instruments differ in terms of objectives and final impacts on the price of electricity we examine the effect of these policy instruments in the electricity sector focusing on electricity producers and suppliers in a competitive market using microeconomic theory we identify synergies between market players and demonstrate the total effect on the electricity price when suppliers internalize the behaviour of producers in their decisions this model refers to an ideal market situation of full liberalization the cases we examine consist of electricity producers with and without a carbon tax electricity suppliers with and without an electricity tax and with whc obligations furthermore we present a parallel implementation of whc for electricity suppliers with carbon tax on electricity producers and an electricity tax with whc obligations to electricity suppliers we demonstrate differences in optimization behaviour of producers and suppliers based on a couple of cases of whc with carbon and electricity taxes various positive and negative effects of both schemes in terms of target achievement and efficiency are present which can lead to an added value of such schemes in the policy mix although uncertainties of outcomes are quite high a basic finding is that in a merit order several parameters can increase final electricity price after the implementation of different policies demand for electricity and electricity supply cost at a large scale and then follow the level of level of obligation for energy saving level of penalty and price of whc representing the marginal costs of energy saving projects the impact magnitude of parameters depends on the values chosen and on the initial position of suppliers i e if their actual behaviour deviates from full compliance with targets

how venture capital firms differ abstract four potential sources of differences between venture capital vc firms were examined venture stage of interest amount of assistance provided by the vc vc firm size and geographic region where located through a questionnaire 149 venture capitalists provided data about their firms about what they look for in evaluating an investment and about how they work with a portfolio company following an investment firms were divided into four groups based on venture stage of interest the earlier the investment stage the greater the interest in potential investments built upon proprietary products product uniqueness and high growth markets late stage investors were more interested in demonstrated market acceptance there were no differences by stage regarding the desired qualities of management however after the investment was made earlier stage investors attached more importance to spending their time evaluating and recruiting managers earlier stage investors sought ventures with higher potential returns a 42 hurdle rate of return for the earliest stage investor versus 33 for the late stage investor late stage investors spent more time evaluating a potential investment however after the investment was made there was little difference in the amount of time spent assisting the portfolio company there were however differences in the significance that vcs attached to particular post investment activities firms were split into three groups based upon the amount of time the vc spent with a portfolio company after an investment was made as lead investor the most active group averaged over 35 hours per month per investment and the least active group averaged less than seven hours the difference in assistance provided was not strongly tied to differences in investment stage of interest there were major differences in the importance the vcs attached to their post investment activities not surprisingly high involvement vcs viewed their activities as more important based upon the amount of capital they managed firms were also split into three groups average fund size varied from 278 to 12 million dollars the larger firms had more professionals and managed more money per professional the large firms provided the least and the medium sized firms the most assistance to portfolio companies large firms also made larger individual investments even though they invested over half their funds in late stage investments whereas smaller firms focused on the earlier stages the large firms were still a major source of early stage financing there were no differences between geographic regions in the proportion of investments where the venture capital firm served as lead investor there were however major regional differences in investment stages of interest also differences were observed between regions that were not a result of differing size and investment stage

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

private business sales environments in the united kingdom abstract when an owner manager of a business firm decides to sell the company it is not a trivial decision whether it is a sale forced by circumstances outside company control or a positive strategic choice it is certainly significant moreover the method of exit the advice taken and the deal that is eventually struck will clearly affect the nature of the owner s eventual lifestyle in such circumstances there are four choices open to the owner 1 sale to a third party 2 sale to the management and or employees 3 public quotation on the stock exchange 4 liquidation this research first analyzes the magnitude of activity in the united kingdom in each of the above categories during the five year period 1983 1987 the results show very clearly that there is a strategic loosening taking place in the corporate marketplace more firms are being sold and more owner managers are choosing to exit from ownership of their firms moreover the most frequently used exit route by far is that of the private advertized sale the second part of this paper analyzes in detail the data for the private advertized sale by means of principal component analysis and cluster analysis seven ecological incubator environments were constructed at a county level significant differences were observed between the environments in respect to private advertized sales private advertized sales rates and industrial structure these results show clearly that the nature of the supply of owner managers wishing to realize their ownership is geographically biased and is in part a reflection of the existing industrial and commercial base