Christian Keuschnigg

Public Policy for Venture Capital

This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and offer a base salary as well. In addition to providing incentive compatible equity finance, they support the venture with managerial advice to raise survival chances. We analyze several policy measures addressed at venture capital activity: government spending on entrepreneurial training, subsidies to equipment investment, and output subsidies at the production stage. While these measures stimulate entrepreneurship, only cost-effective government services can improve welfare.

Start-up investment with scarce venture capital support

Abstract Venture capitalists, representing informed capital, screen, monitor and advise start-up entrepreneurs. The paper reports three new results on venture capital (VC) finance and the evolution of the VC industry. First, there is an optimal VC portfolio size with a trade-off between the number of companies and the value of managerial advice. Second, advice tends to be diluted when the industry expands and VC skills remain scarce in the short-run. The delayed entry of experienced VCs eventually restores the quality of advice and leads to more focused company portfolios. Third, as a welfare result, VCs tend to provide too little advisory effort and to invest in too few companies. Testable implications are also discussed.

Start-ups, venture capitalists, and the capital gains tax

A model of start-up finance with double moral hazard is proposed. Entrepreneurs have ideas but lack own resources as well as commercial experience. Venture capitalists provide start-up finance and managerial support. Both types of agents thus jointly contribute to the firms success, but neither types effort is verifiable. We find that the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low venture capital support. In this situation, the capital gains tax is particularly harmful. The introduction of a small tax impairs managerial advice and leads to first order welfare losses. Once the tax is in place, limitations on loss off-set may paradoxically contribute to higher quality of venture capital backed entrepreneurship and welfare.

Taxes and Venture Capital Support

In this paper we set up a model of start-up finance under double moral hazard. Entrepreneurs lack own resources and business experience to develop their ideas. Venture capitalists can provide start-up finance and commercial support. The effort put forth by either agent contributes to the firms success, but is not verifiable. As a result, the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low venture capital support. The capital gains tax becomes especially harmful, as it further impairs advice and causes a first-order welfare loss. Once the capital gains tax is in place, limitations on loss off-set may paradoxically contribute to higher quality of venture capital finance and welfare. Subsidies to physical investment in VC-backed start-ups are detrimental in our framework.

Incorporation and Taxation: Theory and Firm-Level Evidence

This paper provides a theory and firm-level evidence on the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs in a model of taxes and corporate governance. The theory explains how the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs is driven by taxation (corporate and personal income taxes), corporate transparency, access to external capital and limited liability. We estimate features of this model using a large cross-section of more than 540, 000 firms in European manufacturing. We find that higher personal income tax rates favor incorporation while higher corporate tax rates reduce the probability to incorporate. These findings are robust to the inclusion of other economic and institutional determinants of external financing and choice of organizational form.

Exports, Foreign Direct Investment and the Costs of Corporate Taxation

Depending on the definition of the tax base, the statutory corporate tax rate implies rather different measures of effective average and marginal tax rates. This paper develops a model of a monopolistically competitive industry with extensive and intensive business investment and shows how these margins respond to changes in average and marginal corporate tax rates. Intensive investment refers to the size of a firms capital stock. Extensive investment refers to the firms production location and reflects the trade-off between exports and foreign direct investment as alternative modes of foreign market access. The paper derives comparative static effects of the corporate tax and shows how the cost of public funds depends on the elasticities of the extensive and intensive investment responses.

Optimal Public Policy For Venture Capital Backed Innovation

This Paper discusses the role of public policy towards the venture capital industry. The model emphasises four margins: supply of entrepreneurs due to career choice, entry of venture capital funds and search for investment opportunities, simultaneous entrepreneurial effort and managerial advice subject to double moral hazard, and mark-up pricing when the successful firm introduces a new good. The Paper derives an optimal policy that succeeds to implement a first best allocation in decentralized equilibrium. It also considers short- and long-run comparative static and welfare effects of piecemeal reform with regard to the capital gains tax, innovation subsidy, public R&D spending and other policy initiatives.

Austria in the European Union: Dynamic Gains from Integration and Distributional Implications

Austria in the European Union Dynamic gains from integration and distributional implications This article proposes to measure the welfare effects of Austrias membership of the EU. In addition to the traditional sectoral reallocation effects of open trade, our computations take into account a number of effects not usually measured: expected capital accumulation, saving, and income redistribution across generations. EU membership involves trade integration (lower trade costs, a common external tariff), adopting the common agricultural policy, and membership contributions to the EU. The gains from trade integration and the adoption of the common agricultural policy are partly offset by the burden of contribution payments. The net welfare gain, measured in terms of an equivalent permanent income stream, is 1.24% of GDP. This aggregate figure masks sizeable distribution effects. As expected, agriculture is particularly hard hit. Moreover, membership has a tendency to favour the old as well as future generations at the expense of those entering economic life at the time of accession. We conclude that the ultimate gains from EU membership will depend on how these distribution issues are solved and how the budgetary cost is financed. —Christian Keuschnigg and Wilhelm Kohler

An Incumbent Country View on Eastern Enlargement of the EU. Part II: The Austrian Case

In Part I of this paper, we have presented a general treatment of the welfare effect of an eastern EU enlargement on incumbent countries. Part II now takes a closer look at the Austrian case. We first present a few descriptive statistics on the role that east-west trade, as well as the pertinent tradebarriers, play for the Austrian economy. We then argue that a numerical simulation, based on a suitably specified general equilibrium model, is an appropriate way towards a full evaluation of the welfare and distributional consequences of enlargement. Focussing on the Austrian case, we thereforeimplement an enriched and parameterized version of the general model used in Part I of the paper. The model features savings and investment, based on intertemporal optimization, as well as sectoral allocation of capital andlabor (skilled/unskilled), based on product differentiation and imperfect competition. In addition, the model incorporates a detailed representation of the government budget, featuring distortive taxes and subsidies, as wellas transfers to domestic households, and financial transactions with the EU. The model allows us to take a quantitative view on both the costs and integration gains of an eastern enlargement. Relying on a Hicksian welfare measure which incorporates both long-run effects and short-run adjustment, our numericalsimulations indicate that, in the Austrian case, the integration gains outweigh the fiscal burden.

Modeling intertemporal general equilibrium: An application to Austrian commercial policy

We present a multi-sector CGE model featuring forward looking investiment and savings behavior within an intertemporal optimization framework. Thus, the model captures several of the intertemporal effects of commercial policy that have been stressed by recent literature on current account adjustment. We argue that pursuing a simulation approach in addressing these issues is warranted by certain limitations and ambiguities of the analytical literature. In addition to presenting the details of the model structure, the paper addresses calibration issues relating to intertemporal parameters. The model is calibrated to a microconsistent data set for the Austrian economy. Finally, the paper features an application of the model to a simple tariff liberalization scenario.