Younghoon Kim’s research while affiliated with Seoul National University and other places

The government has taken the dual role of filling the equity gap inherent in the investment of early-stage firms and inducing private venture capital investment. From the perspective of the latter role, the literature has examined whether the government-backed venture capital (GVC) substitutes or complements private-backed venture capital (PVC). Whereas many studies found that GVC substitutes PVC from fund level analysis, other studies have found GVC complements PVC from firm level analysis. So far few scholars have shown empirically but were unable to explain how complementarity of GVC and PVC on raising portfolio firm’s performance takes place. Thus, this paper aims to explain the mechanism behind complementarity of GVC and PVC by arguing that GVC takes the certification role and PVC takes the value-adding role. We predict that while increased equity participation by GVC increases the opportunities of obtaining long-term debt, increased equity participation by PVC increases the operating efficiencies of the portfolio firms. We find support for our arguments by carrying out fixed effects panel estimation on 3,342 venture capital backed firms in South Korea from 1994-2010.

Set by government, corporate, financial, and individual sources, venture capitals(VCs) in South Korea adapted themselves to a new and uncertain VC market through stand-alone as well as syndicated investments. This study raises questions about whether the various financial sources differentially preferred and contributed to their portfolio firms even during the market boom in 2000. Even though there was no single capital source to show better performance, only corporate VCs are found not only to prefer, but also to contribute to intermediate-goods firms. This result can be based on the unique role of corporate VCs to make use of vertical value chain linkage for their investment.

The Korean government has driven the venture capital market since KTB Network was created in 1981 to provide capital to the high tech firms. Due to the venture policy, the venture capital market has undergone a compressed growth in a short period of time. In 1986, the government enacted the “Small and Medium Business Start-up Support Act” and “Finance Act to Support New Technology Businesses” to provide legal bases to establish venture capital (VC) firms. The government pushed the VC firms to carry out equity investments on small and medium businesses within the age of 7 years. Hence, the Korea Development Bank Capital and TG Venture, the archetypes of today’s VC firms, have been established to finance high tech firms such as Medison, Mirae, and Sambo Computer (Lee 2003). In spite of the efforts made by the government, until the mid-1990s, there were problems in constructing the venture capital market, due to poor system to finance technology and lack of policy measures to support the high tech firms. There was no exit system to liquidize the equity investments, and most of the investment targets were from mature industries which brought low returns. Further debt financing was preferred to equity investment because of the low risk and high interest rate. This paper is organized as follows. Chapter 2 presents the literature reviewed and the hypotheses proposed. In Chap. 3, methodologies are presented while in Chap. 4, the data and the variables are presented. In Chap. 5, the effect of asset composition strategies on operating efficiency is estimated and analyzed. In Chap. 6, the estimation results are reviewed and policy implications addressed.

Although numerous papers have examined the ways in which firms can improve their innovative performance through technology alliances, empirical research on the effect of contract structures in technology licensing has been scarce. This study provides evidence that the payment mechanisms agreed upon in licensing contracts affect the licensee firms¡¯ innovative performance. Based on a dataset of technology licensing contracts concluded by small- and medium-sized enterprises around the world, this paper analyzes the influence of fixed-fee payments and ongoing payments?including royalty, milestone, and equity payments?on firm performance. The findings reveal that ongoing payments are more likely to positively influence the innovative performance of licensee firms. The results also suggest that equity grants to the licensor would not impact the licensee¡¯s performance as much as fixed-fee payments. These outcomes provide crucial insights into the ways in which small high-tech firms can utilize their external technology resources.