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Financing With Venture Capital: Advances in Knowledge Over the Last Ten Years and Research Avenues
3. Venture Capital: Academic Research
To allow for a broad survey of the literature, we identified six research topics that are pertinent to venture capital. These topics were then subdivided into 18 research topics to facilitate synthesis. Table 1 shows these topics and subjects as well as the frequency of their occurrences (summaries of these studies, as well as the authors, are given in Appendix 1). Our survey shows greater interest in research on financing supply (the role of venture capital (Topic 1) and market operations (Topic 2) than for those that deal more specifically with demand (which would be the entrepreneurs' point of view [ Topics 3 and 4 ]). This finding will be repeated several times in the report as well as in our conclusions.
There has been an explosion of academic research in the last few years, in light of the increase in the number of qualified researchers throughout the world and, as a result, the rise of new, highstandard, scientific periodicals. The volume of annual research, therefore, varies greatly, as shown in Figure 1, where there is evidence of greater activity since 2000. Of the 302 documents published before 2003, 39 per cent were published in 2002 and 69 per cent since 2000.
Figure 1: Annual Distribution of Inventoried Documents (313 documents)
Figures 2a and 2b show that the increase in the number of publications did not change the orientation of the research from that of before 2000, topics related to capital supply (Topic 1) and market structure (Topic 2) drawing most of the researchers' attention (see Table 1 to identify research topics). We will discuss these aspects in greater detail in subsequent sections.
As shown in Figure 3, empirical research represents the largest part of the literature on venture capital.
Figure 3: Type of Research Selected by the Authors (313 documents)
To compare their contents to that of theoretical research, we have merged the empirical and professional research, both of which are based on statistical data. This information is shown in Figure 4, where we see that statistical research encompasses more research topics, as opposed to theoretical research, 90 per cent of which is concentrated on the role and functioning of the venture capital market (Topics 1 and 2).
Figure 4: Distribution of Topics by the Types of Research (564 occurences)
The inventory allowed us to identify the scientific periodicals that are more likely to publish articles on venture capital as well as on the public organizations that are most active in this field. As venture capital deals especially with SMEs, it is in this area that one finds the largest volume of research. The journals that specialize in finance and economics rarely publish texts on these subjects whereas there is one periodical that is dedicated entirely to this research area, namely: Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, in existence since 1999.
Table 2 lists the periodicals that have published two or more articles on venture capital in the last ten years as well as the total number of articles inventoried. One must remember that this research emanates from references found on the Internet and is not a systematic analysis of these journals for the purpose of making an exhaustive listing of pertinent publications. Therefore, it is possible that a certain number of articles have not been included here.
Some centres of expertise have produced a certain number of works and have conducted a certain number of activities on venture capital. This is true of the Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research (CESifo – Germany), the Center for Economic Public Research (CEPR – England), the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER – Boston) and the Center for Europe and Economic Research (ZEW – Germany).
Lastly, some authors have influenced the development of knowledge more than others. They can be considered as experts because their name appears on three or more documents (regardless of their standing in the listing of authors) in our reference list at the end of this report. This list of experts is presented in Table 3, with the number of times they have been cited as author or coauthor, as well as the organization to which they belong. It should be mentioned that the classification does not take into account the rank of the author, which could be very important. For example, although Lerner is at the top of the list, his name appears first seven times out of 14, compared to Cumming, whose name appears first 12 times out of 12.
This list of writings will be presented as follows: we will first mention the number of times that a particular topic is dealt with; which research subjects of a more specific nature were broached and certain key expressions that are frequently found; the conclusions that can be drawn from these studies; and, last, certain avenues of research that should be dealt with in greater depth.
