The Impact of Venture Capital Screening  (Job Market Paper)  [ SSRN ]   [ PDF ]   

I study the effect of limited attention on resource allocation by venture capitalists. Using engagement in the IPO process as a measure of distraction, I document that investments made by distracted venture capitalists into new portfolio companies tend to underperform. Such companies are 7% less likely to go public or become acquired, and also exhibit lower exit multiples. The adverse effect of the attention constraints is present only in the vicinity of the distracting IPO and manifests itself both for individual partners and venture capital funds. Overall, the results indicate that the scarcity of attention hypothesis holds in the context of deal sourcing and screening in venture capital, highlighting the presence of skill in the company selection process. Presentations:   SFS Cavalcade North America 2020                             PERC Private Equity Research Symposium (Oxford, 2019)                             Annual Private Capital Research Conference (Montreux, 2019)                              KWC Conference on Entrepreneurial Finance (Lund, 2019)                             U of Geneva, U of Lausanne

Media coverage: Institutional Investor, Canadian Investment Review

Do Banks Compete on Non-Price Terms? Evidence from Loan Covenants  with Christoph Herpfer and Roberto Steri

We investigate the link between competition in credit markets and an important non-price term in lending, financial covenants. Using an exhaustive dataset covering the U.S. market for leveraged loans, we exploit a regulatory action as a plausibly exogenous reduction in the ability of regulated banks to offer loan contracts with lax covenant protection.  As regulated banks demand relatively more covenants, borrowers switch to unregulated lenders, or shadow banks. As a consequence, the market share of regulated banks declined by roughly $30bn, to the advantage of the shadow banking system. This shift is not driven by a general drop in loan supply or change in other lending terms by regulated banks. Our results suggest the necessity to internalize the effects of non-price competition between the regulated and the non-regulated sectors in regulatory decision making. Presentations: AFA 2021 (Chicago)*, EFA 2020 (Helsinki), MFA 2020 (Chicago)*                            8th Empirical Financial Intermediation (EFI) Workshop (2019)*                             Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (2018)*, Central Bank of Ireland (2018)                              Emory (2018)*, GeorgiaTech (2018)*,  U of Lausanne (2018)                             * co-author

Competition for Talent: The Impact of Venture Capital Flows on Incumbent Firms by Linghang Zeng (Babson College)

Board Dynamics over the Startup Life Cycle by Michael Ewens (Caltech) and Nadya Malenko (Michigan Ross)