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This paper studies whether and how the contractual horizon of venture capital funds affects their investments in innovative firms. I find that funds with a longer remaining horizon select younger companies at an earlier stage of their development, which grow their patent stock significantly more than companies financed by funds with a shorter horizon. The sensitivity of investment decisions to horizon is stronger among experienced venture capital firms, who allocate investments across a larger number of fund vintages. Finally, I find that the interaction of funds’ fixed horizon with their option-like compensation structure affects their investment decisions: when early performance has been high, fund managers target less innovative companies. These findings shed light on the drivers of venture capital investment decisions and on their implications for the type of companies that receive venture capital financing. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.

This paper examines the extent to which individual investors provide liquidity to the stock market and whether they are compensated for doing so. We show that the ability of aggregate retail order imbalances, contrarian in nature, to predict short-term future returns is significantly enhanced during times of market stress, when market liquidity provisions decline. While a weekly rebalanced portfolio long in stocks purchased and short in stocks sold by retail investors delivers 19% annualized excess returns over a four-factor model from 2002 to 2010, it delivers up to 40% annualized returns in periods of high uncertainty. Despite this high aggregate performance, individual investors do not reap the rewards from liquidity provision because they experience a negative return on the day of their trade and they reverse their trades long after the excess returns from liquidity provision are dissipated. During the financial crisis, French active retail stock traders stepped up to the plate, increased stock holdings, and provided liquidity. In contrast, mutual fund investors fled from delegation by selling their mutual funds.

This article examines whether firm-level idiosyncratic shocks propagate in production networks. We identify idiosyncratic shocks with the occurrence of natural disasters. We find that affected suppliers impose substantial output losses on their customers, especially when they produce specific inputs. These output losses translate into significant market value losses, and they spill over to other suppliers. Our point estimates are economically large, suggesting that input specificity is an important determinant of the propagation of idiosyncratic shocks in the economy. JEL Codes: L14, E23, E32.