融资依赖、IPO与创业板上市公司创新投资

   以2009—2014年创业板上市公司首次公开募股(initial public offering,IPO）前后3年数据为样本,构建双重差分模型,实证研究了IPO对企业创新投资的影响和不同融资依赖企业IPO创新影响的差异及其原因。实证结果表明：IPO后企业创新投资显著下降,且外部融资依赖企业IPO后创新投资下降幅度显著大于内部融资依赖企业,因为外部融资依赖企业风险投资参与比例和持股比例较高,IPO后风险投资对企业创新的负影响显著,体现了IPO后企业高管和投资者在市场短期盈利压力的“短视”行为。这为科创板市场弱化短期盈利的监管以强化企业持续创新的动力提供了经验证据。     

Can direct innovation subsidies relax SMEs’ financial constraints?

Financial constraints hamper the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to undertake innovative activities, which, in turn, affects countries’ long-term growth. Therefore, promoting access to external funding for SMEs represents an important challenge for policymakers. This paper investigates whether innovation subsidies, provided by France's public investment bank to French SMEs, have translated into better access to both debt and equity financing by means of a certification effect. We exploit a unique database that collates the innovation subsidies received by French firms over the 2000-2014 period to construct a quasi-natural experiment and evaluate the causal impact of these subsidies on financial constraints for SMEs. We find a significant improvement in access to bank financing for subsidized firms, but the effect is heterogeneous and mainly concentrated on micro and small firms that have been operating for around six years. In contrast, we do not find any significant improvement in access to equity financing. We demonstrate that this last result is partly explained by a substitution effect between bank debt and equity financing.     

The distinct signaling effects of R&D subsidy and non-R&D subsidy on IPO performance of IT entrepreneurial firms in China

This study investigates how R&D subsidy and non-R&D subsidy affect entrepreneurial firms’ initial public offering (IPO) performance in an emerging economy like China. Analyzing data from 269 IT (information technology) entrepreneurial firms in China, we found that R&D subsidy has an inverted U-shape effect on IPO performance, while non-R&D subsidy has a positive effect on IPO performance. Furthermore, both state ownership and patent intensity moderate the inverted U-shape relationship between R&D subsidy and IPO performance. In contrast, neither of them moderates the positive relationship between non-R&D subsidy and IPO performance. These findings contribute to the literature on the effectiveness of government subsidy by highlighting the symbolic effect of government subsidy on external financing in emerging economies, and offer important practical implications to entrepreneurial firms and government funding agencies in China.     

Spatial collocation and venture capital in the US biotechnology industry

Biotechnology firms operate in a high-risk and high-reward environment and are in a constant race to secure venture capital (VC) funds. Previous contributions to the literature show that the VC firms tend to invest locally in order to monitor their investments and to provide operating assistance to their target firms. Further, biotechnology is a knowledge-based industry that tends to exhibit spatial clusters, and the firms in such industries may collocate to benefit from gaining access to local markets for specialized inputs (e.g., skilled researchers) and from local knowledge spillovers and network externalities. If such gains exist, we expect that the collocated firms should exhibit positively correlated performance, including in their ability to attract venture capital funds. The purpose of this paper is to empirically measure the strength and spatial extent of the relationships among the amount of funds raised by proximate biotechnology firms. We model these relationships with a spatial autoregression (SAR) model, and we control for characteristics of the biotechnology firms and the VC firms that provide their funds as well as site-specific factors. Based on our fitted SAR model, we find that the amount of venture capital raised by a particular biotechnology firm is significantly influenced by the number of VC firms and the VC funding levels raised by biotechnology firms located within a 10-mile radius, but these relationships are not statistically significant beyond this range.     

Conveying quality and value in emerging industries: Star scientists and the role of signals in biotechnology

This paper addresses the role that scientific status plays in initial public offerings of technology focused firms. The paper builds on the literature of the sociology of science as well as the work of Spence (1974) and Podolny (1993) and argues that the presence of a Nobel laureate affiliated with a firm making an IPO provides a signal of firm quality to potential investors. Moreover, and building on the work of Podolny and Scott Morton (1999) and Stuart et al. (1999) we hypothesize that the importance of status diminishes as other measures of firm quality become available. We test our hypothesis for two periods of initial public offerings in biotechnology. We document that there is a clear difference in “maturity” of the firms across the two windows on a number of metrics. Consistent with our hypothesis that Nobel laureates play an important role as a non-financial signal of firm quality, we find that first-window firms with a Nobel laureate affiliate realize greater IPO proceeds in the amount of $24 million. In the second window the amount of money raised is not significantly different between Nobel and non-Nobel firms. This finding is consistent with the signaling literature that argues that the importance of a signal is inversely related to the availability of cogent information on firm quality. Consistent with this view, we also find a change between the two windows in the importance of other non-financial metrics used to convey value. Our research is one of the first to examine the dynamic nature of signals. Because we are unable to distinguish the extent to which the reduction in uncertainty at the firm level is correlated with the reduction of uncertainty at the industry level, the question remains as to the extent to which the diminished importance of signals in our second period is due to a change in market uncertainty versus a change in firm uncertainty.     

资本市场促进了高新技术企业研发投入吗

企业研发投入需要大量资金长期持续性的投入,外部股权融资的获取是影响企业研发投入的关键因素。本文首先就资本市场对企业研发投入的影响进行了理论分析,然后基于中国高新技术上市公司动态面板数据,用系统GMM方法实证检验了外部股权融资对企业研发投入的影响。研究发现,资本市场提供的外部股权融资促进了高新技术上市公司的研发投入,并且这种正向影响对规模小的企业更为明显。因此,应鼓励研发密集型中小企业上市,以促进企业研发投入。     

政府引导基金投资对创业企业后续融资的影响机制研究

基于激励、认证、“良性循环”三个理论视角,研究政府引导基金投资对创业企业后续融资的影响机制。通过私募通数据库搜集数据构造匹配样本,研究结果表明：（1）为私人资本提供收益类补偿时,政府引导基金投资可以促进创业企业后续融资;然而,为私人资本提供亏损补偿加上收益类补偿,或采用市场化运作模式时,政府引导基金投资不能促进创业企业后续融资。（2）无论投资早期还是后期的创业企业,或者无论投资高科技行业还是非高科技行业的创业企业,政府引导基金投资都不能促进创业企业后续融资。（3）无论投资创投落后地区还是创投成熟地区的创业企业,政府引导基金投资都不能促进创业企业后续融资。上述结论支持激励假说,但不支持认证假说和“良性循环”假说,表明通过政府引导基金投资促进创业企业后续融资的关键在于为私人资本提供合适的补偿机制。     

资本市场促进了高新技术企业研发投入吗——基于中国上市公司动态面板数据的证据

企业研发投入需要大量资金长期持续性的投入,外部股权融资的获取是影响企业研发投入的关键因素。本文首先就资本市场对企业研发投入的影响进行了理论分析,然后基于中国高新技术上市公司动态面板数据,用系统GMM方法实证检验了外部股权融资对企业研发投入的影响。研究发现,资本市场提供的外部股权融资促进了高新技术上市公司的研发投入,并且这种正向影响对规模小的企业更为明显。因此,应鼓励研发密集型中小企业上市,以促进企业研发投入。     

Sector heterogeneity and dynamic effects of innovation subsidies: Evidence from Horizon 2020

We evaluate the effect of a pan-European innovation funding program on firm growth and innovative output. Using a difference-in-differences estimation on a sample of matched firms, we find that subsidized firms are able to invest more in tangible and intangible assets, achieve higher growth of turnover and employment, and file more patent applications. We then analyze the dynamic treatment effect and find that the effects of subsidization tend to get stronger over time. Moreover, our findings indicate that the effect of subsidization is highly heterogeneous across sectors with different R&D or knowledge intensity and level of competition. Finally, we explore some economic channels to explain how subsidies generate strong effects on firm performance. We show that subsidized firms are able to generate more internal financing and attract more long-term borrowing after receiving the subsidy, yet we find no evidence that subsidized firms are able to attract more external equity financing than similar unsubsidized firms.     

Funding intellectual-capital-abundant technology development: empirical evidence from the Finnish biotechnology business

This study takes an interdisciplinary approach to answering the questions of whether and how the intellectual capital (IC) of a company is related to its financial structure. To this end, we consecutively apply factor and regression analyses on a sample of 65 small and medium-sized Finnish biotechnology companies. Based on the results, we find that firms with a well-balanced IC base finance their operations to a larger extent with retained earnings and debt while companies with less well-balanced IC bases revert to other sources of financing, for example, external equity. Utilizing the conventional pecking order theory as a theoretical backdrop on one hand and recent results from its empirical research on the other, we present two alternative rationales behind deviating capital structure choices made by companies with dissimilar IC bases.     

新能源汽车产业政府补助与市场融资的创新激励效应

本文选取2015-2018年新能源汽车产业110家上市公司面板数据,探索政府补助与市场融资及其协同配合对企业研发创新影响的差异性。结果显示,新能源汽车产业政府补助对企业研发创新具有显著激励效应,市场融资并未显著促进企业研发创新,政府补助与市场融资协同配合能有效促进新能源汽车产业研发创新。通过进一步研究发现,处于不同新能源汽车产业链阶段的企业,政府补助对中上游企业研发创新的激励效应更大,而市场融资对下游企业研发创新的激励效应更大,政府补助与市场融资协同配合对中上游企业研发创新的激励效应更大。同时,相对于国有企业,新能源汽车产业政府补助与市场融资及其两者协同配合对非国有企业研发创新的激励效应更大。本文在一定程度上丰富了创新激励与政府干预理论,并为政府扶持新能源汽车产业精准设计创新政策提供理论指导。     

The elixir (or burden) of youth? Exploring differences in innovation between start-ups and established firms

Despite the widely acknowledged role of start-ups in economic development, little is known about their innovative activities compared with those of established firms. Drawing on a sample of 12,209 UK firms, we differentiate between services and manufacturing firms and, using a matching estimator approach, demonstrate that start-ups differ significantly from established firms in their innovation activities. We find that in services, being a start-up increases the likelihood of product innovations. However, in manufacturing, we find no significant differences in the likelihood of product innovation between start-ups and established firms. When examining the returns to innovation, we find that start-ups have a significant advantage both in services and in manufacturing. We explore the implications of these results for theory and policy.     

Paradoxical transparency? Capital market responses to exploration and exploitation disclosure

We draw on information risk theory and paradox theory to examine the additive and combined effects of disclosing exploration and exploitation information on cost of equity capital. We build on theory that presupposes that the information disclosed by a firm about its innovation activities will reduce information risk of investors. However, we contend that disclosure of exploration and exploitation innovation activities could convey potentially paradoxical expectations about a firm's future value. Based on longitudinal data of the UK FTSE 350 firms from 2011–2016, we show that firms tend to disclose more information related to exploration than exploitation. However, the bulk of market benefits are driven by exploitation rather than exploration disclosures—except for R&D-active firms that are rewarded for exploration disclosure. We also find that the combined disclosure is negatively associated with cost of equity capital, with the sub-population of R&D-active firms particularly accruing synergies from combined disclosure of both exploration and exploitation. These findings suggest that the market differentiates between exploration and exploitation information in addressing information risk, more so than previously assumed. We discuss implications for information-type-dependency in information-risk theory, the outward projection of internal paradoxes, capital market valuations of disclosure by R&D-active firms, opportunity-seeking by large publicly listed corporations, and policy implications.     

The diminishing signaling value of patents between early rounds of venture capital financing

A long stream of research has documented the positive effects that patents bring about to emerging firms in high technology industries. The general consensus is that patents contribute to firm growth because they confer monopolistic market rights, offer protection from competitors, increase the negotiating position of patent holders and other benefits. What has received relatively less attention in the literature is whether patents act as a signal that attracts investors such as venture capital firms. The handful of studies that have addressed that question has not analyzed whether the signaling function of patents decreases after the initial attraction of venture capital, as information asymmetries between investors and target firms reduce. In this study we hypothesize that patent activity has a signaling value that diminishes once information asymmetries between investors and funded firms lessen. To study our proposition we draw upon a longitudinal dataset of more than 580 U.S.-based biotechnology firms to empirically demonstrate that biotechnology firms that have submitted patent applications substantially increase the level of funding they receive for their first round of financing. In line with a reduction of information asymmetries once the initial investment has materialized, patent applications and granted patents have no effect on the growth of venture capital funds raised during the second round of financing. We conclude the study with a discussion of avenues for new research, implications for policy makers that consider the usefulness of the current patent system and with insights that can be employed by managers of firms in knowledge intensive areas such as biotechnology.     

Are patents signals for the IPO market? An EU–US comparison for the software industry

This study investigates empirically whether patents can be signals to financial markets, thus reducing problems of asymmetric information. In particular we study how patenting behaviour impacts on the way investors perceive software firms’ growth potential through an increase in the amount invested at the initial public offering (IPO) of firms in the US and Europe. This study performs regressions on the relationship of patent applications before IPO and the amount of money collected at the IPO, while controlling other factors that may influence IPO performance. We also attempt to account for a potential source of endogeneity problems that can arise for self-selection bias and simultaneity between the number of patent applications prior to going public and the amount of money collected at IPO. We find significant and robust positive correlations between patent applications and IPO performance. The signalling power of patenting is significantly different for US and European companies, and is related to the difficulty in obtaining a signal and its scarcity. An additional patent application prior to IPO increases IPO proceeds by about 0.507% and 1.13% for US and European companies, respectively. Results suggest that a less ‘applicant friendly’ patenting system increases the credibility of patents as signals and their value for IPO investors.     

基于不完全契约的风险企业控制权配置 影响因素研究

摘要：文章在扩展风险投资家与风险企业家风险偏好的基础上,通过引入分段股权融资、控制权收益以及风险投资家监督成本、风险规避成本与战略性收益等变量,基于不完全契约的视角将Tirole（2001）企业融资模型扩展为两期动态过程。基于分段融资的信息发现过程建立两阶段风险企业控制权配置模型,分析初始阶段与中期信号显示阶段风险企业家自有财富、运营企业的非货币收益、人力资本专有性与专用性以及风险投资的专用性、风险规避度与战略性收益等因素对高新技术风险企业控制权配置的影响,得到了一系列结论,为有关高新技术风险企业治理已有的研究提供了有益的补充。     

Partly risky,partly solid – Performance study of public innovation loans

In this paper I attempt to measure the ability of a Norwegian publicly subsidized loan program to identify innovative firms that are victims of market imperfections. I apply three complementary control groups, which all have in common that they address specific unobservable characteristics of the program participants. The program participants perform better on a variety of growth measures compared to the firms rejected by the program. Compared with firms that receive private credit financing, I do not find that the program participants perform better in the upper quantiles of the contingent performance distribution despite a lower survival rate. The latter result suggests that the program does not seem to succeed in identifying a target group of firms with a sufficiently high growth potential. Firms with innovation loans are not outperformed by venture portfolio companies with respect to sales growth. The venture portfolio companies do, however, have higher survival rates as well as stronger growth in employment and assets. The latter result possibly indicates that the venture portfolio companies are more likely to succeed in the long run. The overall results indicate that the selection competency of the bureaucrats administrating the program is at level with that of private banks, and possibly also of that of venture funds. Still, in order for the program to provide the same level of welfare improvement as regular business credit provided by the private market, I find that the positive externalities from the program must be sufficiently large to compensate for the direct public subsidy element including risk adjusted return on equity and social costs of public funds.     

NTBFs—the French case

New technology-based firms (NTBFs) represent only a small proportion of the firms established in France each year; they attract very little specific attention from the national statistical apparatus and are considered to be of marginal significance by both the public authorities and financial institutions. Although the definition of NTBFs is problematic, the available evidence suggests that the survival rate of technology-based firms is higher than that of other start-ups. The most successful in terms of growth belong to dense and convergent networks through which they interact with larger firms and research organisations. There is very little public policy specifically targeted on NTBFs in France. Instead, public financing has been devoted mainly to the development of SMEs in general—in support of their role in the creation of new employment—and to supporting technology-based firms, both large and small, to strengthen the international competitiveness of the French industry.     

Skills or networks? Success and fundraising determinants in a low performing venture capital market

This paper provides a novel interpretation of the factors leading to low performance in venture capital (VC) markets. By using human and social capital perspectives, we investigate the relationship between the professional experience and education of VC firm managers and i) the success of their portfolio firms on one hand and ii) their fundraising activity on the other. Our study focuses on the French VC market. The French business environment is characterized by tight links between businesses and the state and by powerful elite networks, while the VC industry has been dominated by government funding and incentives since the global financial crisis. We evidence a positive relationship between task-specific human capital variables and the exit success of VC-backed firms. However, unlike the research from the US market, we find no support for the claim that success determinants impact fundraising activity. Instead, we substantiate the importance of higher social networks for raising larger funds in markets with strong networks.     

Do R&D subsidies affect SMEs’ access to external financing?

Many countries spend sizeable sums of public money on R&D grants to alleviate debt and equity gaps for small firms’ innovation projects. In making such awards, knowledgeable government officials may certify firms to private financiers. Using a unique Belgian dataset of 1107 approved requests and a control group of denied requests for a specific type of R&D grant, we examine the impact of subsidies on small firms’ access to external equity, short term and long term debt financing. We find that obtaining an R&D subsidy provides a positive signal about SME quality and results in better access to long-term debt.