【主讲人】李劲林 博士
【主持人】高明 副教授
【报告题目】Government as an Equity Investor: Evidence from Chinese Government Venture Capital through Cycles

【报告摘要】This paper studies the behavior and performance of government venture capital (GVC) through the market cycles. We construct the first comprehensive database of government involvement in venture capital in China from 1999 to 2018. With over $1 trillion raised and an explosive growth rate of 25% annually during this period, China has become the second-largest venture market globally. GVC is an essential feature of the Chinese VC market, accounting for 40% of the deals and 50% raised funds. Compared with private venture capital (PVC), GVCs invest more towards local, manufacturing, and early-stage deals. Also, GVCs underperform PVCs by 30%. Next, across venture market cycles, GVC behavior is less cyclical than their private counterparts: GVCs tend to raise more money and make more investments during downturns. More interestingly, the performance of GVC is also less cyclical:  the performance gap between GVC and PVC is reduced by 60% during downturns. A likely channel for this improved performance is related to governments' "deep pockets" because the results are driven by fiscally healthy cities. This improvement does not appear to be explained by a change of VC quality and other unobservable government assistance during downturns. Overall, we believe that a government's policy orientations and its ability to deploy capital locally during challenging times are crucial to understanding GVCs' role in the capital markets and the broader economy.

【主讲人介绍】李劲林，哈佛大学肯尼迪政府管理学院与哈佛商学院博士后研究员。他分别于北京大学经济学院和北京大学国家发展研究院获得经济学学士（2016）与经济学博士（2021）学位，并曾在哈佛大学访问（2018-2021）。研究兴趣集中在创业金融、企业创业与创新等方面。