Mitigation of Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Venture Capital Financing: The Influence of the Country's Institutional Setting

A venture capitalist (VC) needs to trade off benefits and costs when attempting to mitigate agency problems in their investor‐investee relationship. We argue that signals of ventures complement the VC's capacity to screen and conduct a due diligence during the preinvestment phase, but its attractiveness may diminish in institutional settings supporting greater transparency. Similarly, whereas a VC may opt for contractual covenants to curb potential opportunism by ventures in the postinvestment phase, this may only be effective in settings supportive of shareholder rights enforcement. Using an international sample of VC contracts, our study finds broad support for these conjectures. It delineates theoretical and practical implications for how investors can best deploy their capital in different institutional settings while nurturing their relationships with entrepreneurs.     

Digitalisierung und die Zukunft der Arbeit

Wirtschaftsdienst - Durch eine rasant wachsende Rechenleistung können immer mehr Tätigkeiten, die bislang dem Menschen vorbehalten schienen, mittels Maschinen und Algorithmen...     

Technology and public goods

This paper presents a theory of public goods based on production theory where public goods are viewed as inputs to the production process. We examine the pure case of public inputs (no private inputs) as well as the mixed case (private and public inputs). We show how the case of public inputs is related to certain forms of nonjoint production, and we characterize it in terms of variable profit and joint cost functions. Comparative statics results are derived graphically in the two-by-two case.     

Fixed versus flexible exchange rates in an equilibrium business cycle model

This essay re-examines the question of which exchange rate regime is preferable, using a rational expectations model that explicitly incorporates wealth, and emphasizing the information-signalling role of prices. Previous authors have stressed the argument that floating rates provide agents with an additional source of information, which improves forecasting accuracy, leading to more efficient allocations. This paper adds the counterweighing argument that they also have the effect, in contrast to fixed rates, of introducing an additional source of (monetary) disturbances in the determination of real variables. Another issue addressed is the nature of exchange rate adjustments to monetary disturbances.     

The emergence of a protective agency and the constitutional dilemma

In the last decades' revival of contractarianism a constitutional contract is interpreted as a device to overcome the hypothetical state of anarchy. It is not entirely clear, however, how, in a pre-constitutional setting that lacks any institutional forms, an unanimous agreement on the rules and the agency enforcing the rules can be imagined to emerge. This paper conceptualizes the problem in game-theoretic terms. A solution is discussed together with an old dilemma that turns up in this context. The dilemma results from the fact that the protective agency has to be endowed with sufficiently powerful coercive means to prevent anyone breaking the social contract. However, this concentration of power itself may induce a violation by making the protective agency usurp its power. The logical basis of the dilemma is explored together with the conditions under which it may challenge the contractarian approach. I would like to thank Juli Irving-Lessmann, Dennis Mueller, Viktor Vanberg, Georg von Wangenheim, and in particular Hartmut Kliemt for helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Routines and the sustainable lock-out of Moroccan oil refineries

For many years, researchers have tried to shed light into the black box of economic agents to investigate the mechanisms that guide their actions. Evolutionary economists have used the concept of ‘routines’ to explain why some firms are more innovative than others. The case study on French and Moroccan oil refineries presented in this paper suggests that this concept can also be used to explore differences in the way these firms manage health, safety, and environmental (HSE) issues. An improved understanding of firms' HSE behaviour allows policy-makers to design policies that can foster the emergence of strong HSE routines and substantially improve firms' HSE performance. Results show that, in spite of low HSE regulatory pressures in Morocco, Samir oil refineries operating in the Kingdom have developed an HSE management routine. A tabled presentation of the HSE management routine of Samir and of the French group Total allows us to compare the HSE behaviour of these firms, and to suggest how new routines could trigger a lock-out from the low HSE performance of Samir.