Financing High-tech Start-ups: Moral Hazard, Information Asymmetry and the Reallocation of Control Rights

Abstract

Abstract Recent data suggest that venture capital investments concentrate in the high-tech sector only in those countries where banks are not allowed to offer equity financing. To explain this fact, I develop a simple principal-agent model of start-up financing with both private information and hidden actions in which the equity investor can vary the level of control over the firm and the debt investor cannot. The model shows that when three commonly documented characteristics of the high-tech industry coexist, namely: (i) a high degree of information asymmetry, (ii) a high level of uncertainty about returns, and (iii) a large amount of R&D investments preceding production, then the ability to reallocate control rights that are contingent on performance becomes the key. Unlike debt contracts, equity contracts specify detailed provisions regarding the allocation of control rights. Thus, venture capitalists as equity holders have a clear advantage in financing young high-tech firms in places where banks are not allowed to offer equity contracts; in countries with no such restriction, they no longer have such an advantage. This result helps explain why most European governments’ efforts in promoting venture capital activities failed to attract such investments in the high-tech sector.