Boris Mrkajic

Venture Capital (VC) was born and has flourished in the United States, yet it has only modestly developed in other geographical areas. A vast body of research has been carried out to investigate the factors which are conducive to VC activity, and that may better explain the differences in the degree of development and performance of VC industry across different geographical contexts. However, there has only been a limited effort in the literature to systematize what we know (and what we do not know) about the institutional factors that spur VC activity. This paper tries to close that gap, through a systematic survey of the existing literature on the institutional and related determinants of VC activity. Grounding on the seminal work of North (1990), we consider formal (e.g. laws and formal rules) and informal (e.g. cultural norms and tacit codes of behaviour) institutions which are found in the extant empirical economics and management literature to affect the development of the VC industry. Building on this careful review, our paper aims to propose interesting avenues for future research in this domain.

Prior research shows that entrepreneurship enhances economic development. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that it is not the number of new startups that matter for that goal, but rather their quality. This paper studies whether institutional change can facilitate the transition from quantity toward quality of entrepreneurship. We investigate the effect of the Italian policy intervention targeting Young Innovative Companies on the human capital of entrepreneurs, and how that influences entrepreneurial performance. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment setting by decomposing the impact of lowering entry and growth barriers. The findings indicate that the reform, and in particular, lowering growth barriers attracts founders endowed with the most valuable experience in the same sector and/or management functions, who are also able to capitalize on the introduced benefits the most.

Relying on the institutional and innovation theories, we argue that the institutional features of countries are significantly influencing energy‐efficiency innovation (EEI), a relevant and particular type of environmental innovation activities. Analysis of a cross‐sectional sample of 22,936 firms from nine European countries, drawn from the 2006–8 Community Innovation Survey, confirms the hypothesis that formal and informal institutions influence the propensity of firms to introduce EEIs in general. Furthermore, formal institutions that generate regulatory pressures are found to spur both product and process EEI activities, while informal institutions exerting social pressures are able to significantly drive only product EEI activities. Large firms appear to be relatively more reactive to high regulatory pressures. We draw implications for policy‐makers and managers based on the findings.

Relying on the institutional theory, a conceptual framework is developed, which hypothesises that institutional features are creating an environment that signif

The purpose of this paper is to extend existing research on entrepreneurial team formation under a competence-based perspective by empirically testing the influ