Policy-driven expansion of venture capital industry: An empirical examination of cont exts, factors, and effects behind the recen T surge of Korean venture capital industry

Abstract

Using (almost) population-level data of venture capitals for the recent four years (2012- 2015), this paper analyzes the dynamism of Korean venture capitals focusing on growth, funding, investment, and internal capabilities. During the last four years, Korean VC industry had grown rapidly, 1.55 times the funding and 1.64 times the investment. At the same time many qualitative indicators at VC-level related to personnel and capital had also enhanced. During the four-year period, public funding to vcs had increased by 14% per annum, which may have had crowding-in market participation to result in 9% growth rate on the private-side. More importantly, policy drivers had greater impacts on the areas such as early-stage ventures where the private sector had traditionally shied away. Our findings from panel regressions vindicate that public funding favors fledgling young vcs over older ones, which signals positive roles of public funding in terms of overcoming market failure. We could not find evidences that public funding was significantly associated with other internal capabilities of vcs.