A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.

Silicon Valley has become shorthand for a globally acclaimed way to unleash the creative potential of venture capital, supporting innovation and creating jobs. In The Venture Capital State Robyn Klingler-Vidra traces how and why different states have adopted distinct versions of the Silicon Valley model. Venture capital seeks high rewards but is enveloped in high risk. The author’s deep investigations of venture capital policymaking in East Asian states (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore) show that success does not reflect policymakers’ ability to replicate the Silicon Valley model. Instead, she argues, performance reflects their skill in adapting a highly lauded model to their local context. Policymakers are "contextually rational" in their learning; their context-rooted norms shape their preferences. The normative context for learning about policy—how elites see themselves and what they deem as locally appropriate—informs how they design their efforts. The Venture Capital State offers a novel conceptualization of rationality, bridging diametrically opposed versions of bounded and conventional rationality. This new understanding of rationality is simultaneously fully informed and context based, and it provides a framework by which analysts can bring domestic factors to the very heart of international diffusion of policy. Klingler-Vidra concludes that states have a visible hand in constituting even quintessentially neoliberal markets.

Discussing the complex history of Silicon Valley and other pioneering centres of venture capital, Lerner uncovers the extent of government influence in prompting growth. He examines the public strategies used to advance new ventures and reveals the common flaws undermining far too many programmes.

This book explores the best ways for governments to design venture capital investment incentives. Venture capital is a multi-billion-dollar industry and a major driver of innovation and national growth. Investment in startup companies by venture capital funds helps finance new inventions and create wealth, economic growth, and jobs. However, because venture capital investment is highly risky and sensitive to market downturns, many governments around the world use special legal and tax incentives to help encourage this form of investment. Since the introduction of the first venture capital incentive in the USA in 1958, scores of venture capital incentives have come and gone. These incentives have experienced varied success, with some failing entirely. Filling a gap in an important area, this book employs a legal and regulatory approach to examine venture capital policy from a global perspective. It uses an analytical framework to evaluate the design, implementation, and success of incentives, and looks at over 60 examples from 25 countries around the world. The book is aimed at researchers and policy makers in law, finance and economics, as well as practitioners and investors in the venture capital space. The book introduces the legal aspects of venture capital investment and presents a list of leading practice guidelines and recommendations to help policy makers design effective, efficient, and appropriate venture capital incentives.

This report monitors SME and entrepreneur access to finance in 37 countries.

“An incisive history of the venture-capital industry.” —New Yorker “An excellent and original economic history of venture capital.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “A detailed, fact-filled account of America’s most celebrated moneymen.” —New Republic “Extremely interesting, readable, and informative...Tom Nicholas tells you most everything you ever wanted to know about the history of venture capital, from the financing of the whaling industry to the present multibillion-dollar venture funds.” —Arthur Rock “In principle, venture capital is where the ordinarily conservative, cynical domain of big money touches dreamy, long-shot enterprise. In practice, it has become the distinguishing big-business engine of our time...[A] first-rate history.” —New Yorker VC tells the riveting story of how the venture capital industry arose from America’s longstanding identification with entrepreneurship and risk-taking. Whether the venture is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the latest Silicon Valley startup, VC is a state of mind as much as a way of doing business, exemplified by an appetite for seeking extreme financial rewards, a tolerance for failure and experimentation, and a faith in the promise of innovation to generate new wealth. Tom Nicholas’s authoritative history takes us on a roller coaster of entrepreneurial successes and setbacks. It describes how iconic firms like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia invested in Genentech and Apple even as it tells the larger story of VC’s birth and evolution, revealing along the way why venture capital is such a quintessentially American institution—one that has proven difficult to recreate elsewhere.

This book examines tax incentives for investors in start-up companies through a critical analysis of Australia’s early-stage investors (ESI) program, and a comparison of that program with the United Kingdom’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) upon which it is loosely modelled. It discusses the importance of innovation and the special role that venture capital plays in supporting start-ups, and explains the policy rationale for introducing the ESI program as well as dissecting its technical requirements in detail. Special attention is devoted to the program’s ‘early stage’ and ‘innovation’ requirements, which are crucial for determining whether a start-up qualifies for the tax incentives. The book is the first in-depth scholarly legal analysis of the ESI program and the first occasion it has been compared and contrasted with a foreign program. The comparative discussion of the ESI program with the SEIS program enables the authors to make suggestions for reforms to the ESI program so that it can better achieve its policy objectives. The fact that the book includes reform suggestions makes it particularly interesting for policy makers. It is also of broad relevance to legal and finance scholars and students as well as entrepreneurs, angels, venture capitalists and their advisors.