关键词: 风险投资, 风险承担, 研发投资, 技术并购

Abstract:     In recent years, with China′s policy continuously stressing on innovation, scientific and technological innovation has been the main theme of China′s current development. However, scientific and technological innovation investment often goes along with high risks. Therefore, how to promote corporate risk-taking is pivotal to accelerate the pace of scientific and technological innovation in China. Risk taking is to some extent fundamental to the survival and development of entrepreneurial enterprises. Corporate risk-taking plays an important role not only in promoting enterprises′ innovation enthusiasm and R&D investment, but also in improving the efficiency of enterprise resource allocation and enterprise value. What′s more, corporate risk-taking takes an active role in promoting social capital accumulation and improving social productivity. However, high-risk investment projects need higher start-up capital. That means the capital holding and financing constraints of enterprises will significantly affect the attitude and the following risk choices of insiders. Moreover, in order to protect their private benefits such as their unique human capital and on-the-job consumption in the enterprise, insiders may tend to be conservative in choosing corporate investment, even to the extent of passing up value-enhancing risky projects. These problems result in low corporate risk-taking.
   As a strategic investor, venture capital tends to invest in low-mortgage, high-growth, high-risk and high-yield projects. Venture capital plays an active role in reducing agency cost and alleviating agency problem of enterprises, so it has a good fit with corporate risk-taking. Understanding the relationship and mechanism among venture capital, corporate risk-taking and enterprise innovation helps to provide useful guidance for relevant practices. It is also of great practical significance to promote corporate risk-taking, stimulate enterprises′ innovation investment and facilitate the development of innovation and entrepreneurship in China. 
   Based on the theoretical premise that venture capital can alleviate the agency problem of enterprises and reduce the financing cost of enterprises, this paper constructs a three-party dynamic game model that includes entrepreneur, venture capitalist and bank. The model shows the process that venture capitalist affects corporate risk-taking. Then this paper verifies the relevant conclusions of the theoretical model through empirical research based on the data of China′s listing companies from 2007 to 2018. Causal steps approach and Sobel test are used to test the mediating effect of corporate risk-taking between venture capital and corporate innovation investments. What′s more, if VCs have private information about the firms they invest in and particularly if such information is correlated with future corporate risk-taking increases, our traditional OLS regression may not properly capture the screening and monitoring effects of VC backing. We therefore use switching regression with endogenous switching method to alleviate the endogenous problem caused by the selectivity bias and unobservable factors of venture capital. This method, in the form of "what-if" problem, considers whether the corporate risk-taking without (with) venture capital will change if the enterprise has (without) venture capital, which can better explain the causal relationship between venture capital and corporate risk-taking. In addition, the paper also adopts the propensity score matching method to alleviate the endogenous problem caused by the sample selectivity bias.
    The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between venture capital and corporate risk-taking, implying that venture capital can promote corporate risk-taking. The impact of venture capital with different characteristics on corporate risk-taking is different. The high-shareholding, syndicated and high-reputation venture capital have more obvious influence on corporate risk-taking. This conclusion is still robust after the use of switching regression and propensity score matching method. And then, we test the mechanism of venture capital on corporate risk-taking. Two kinds of mechanisms have been identified. Venture capital can improve the ability of corporate governance and reduce the degree of financing constraints which increase the corporate risk-taking. As expected, compared with the low-shareholding, independent and low-reputation venture capital, the high-shareholding, syndicated and high-reputation venture capital are more active in improving corporate governance capacity. The high-shareholding, syndicated and high-reputation venture capital can significantly reduce corporate financing constraints, while the low-shareholding, independent and low-reputation venture capital have no obvious effect. Finally, this paper empirically tests the relationship among venture capital, corporate risk-taking and corporate innovation investment. We measure internal innovation and external innovation with R&D investment and technology acquisition. The results show that corporate risk-taking plays a mediating role between venture capital and corporate innovation investment. Venture capital can promote corporate R&D investment and technology acquisition by enhancing corporate risk-taking.
    This paper makes several important contributions to the academics. In theory, this paper constructs the theoretical model among entrepreneur, venture capitalist and bank, which helps to strengthen understanding the interaction between venture capital and corporate risk-taking. This paper also illustrates the logic framework among venture capital, corporate risk-taking and corporate innovation investment, which provides a theoretical basis and an analytical perspective for future research. In terms of methodology, by adopting the method of switching regression and propensity score matching, this paper distinguishes the "screening effects" and "monitoring effects" of venture capital and reveals the positive influence of venture capital on corporate risk-taking. In practice, the conclusions of this research have important implications for entrepreneurs and policy makers. As far as enterprises are concerned, the improvement of corporate risk-taking is crucial to corporate innovation investment, which is directly related to R&D investment and technological acquisition. But agency problems and capital constraints make corporate risk-taking at a relatively low level. From the perspective of venture capital, this paper finds that venture capital is of benefit to alleviating internal agency problems and financing constraints. Consequently, it is an effective way to enhance the corporate risk-taking by reasonably introducing venture capital and giving full play to the monitoring function of venture capital. As far as policy makers are concerned, venture capital′s value-added service is inseparable from the healthy development of the venture capital market and the establishment and improvement of the legal system related to investor protection. As venture capital drives corporate risk-taking and innovation investment, it will further promote social productivity and economic growth.

Key words:  venture capital, risk-taking, R&D investment, technological acquisition