Venture capital and private equity financing: an overview of recent literature and an agenda for future research

This paper surveys the growing body of recent literature on venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) and formulates an agenda for future research. Specifically, it covers and categorizes 314 articles that have appeared in top leading international journals since 2011 and points to areas that deserve deeper investigation. 67.8% of these works deal exclusively with VC and 26.8% deal exclusively with PE. The main “hot” topics in VC and PE research are: (1) heterogeneity (e.g., in affiliation, experience, reputation) within the VC and PE industries and its effects, (2) the causal link between VC and PE financing and various aspects of company performance, such as growth or innovation, (3) the performance of VC and PE funds and how to measure it properly. In the literature on VC, (4) internationalization and (5) the processes through which VC investors and entrepreneurs select and match with each other are also highly relevant topics. Most recent works (81.2%) are empirical and strategies that aim at identifying causal effects have been getting widespread. Although new sources of data have been used and the European (and to a lesser extent Asian) VC and PE industries have been gaining ground in recent research, more than 52% of all empirical papers still rely on US data.