Cross-Border Venture Capital Investments: What Is the Role of Public Policy?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper. However, I am very confused about how your methodology. For example, you mentioned that in this paper you examine available data and trend to investigate cross-border venture capital investments. However, I did not see your own analysis of the data, instead most the empirical evidences you reported were obtained from dealroom.co. That being said, I think your paper should be positioned as a literature review paper or editoral paper instead of a empirical analysis paper. So I suggest you reframe your paper accordingly.
Author Response
Point 1: This is an interesting paper. However, I am very confused about how your methodology. For example, you mentioned that in this paper you examine available data and trend to investigate cross-border venture capital investments. However, I did not see your own analysis of the data, instead most the empirical evidences you reported were obtained from dealroom.co. That being said, I think your paper should be positioned as a literature review paper or editoral paper instead of a empirical analysis paper. So I suggest you reframe your paper accordingly.
Response 1: We thank the reviewer for the encouraging comments and agree with the need to clarify the methodological approach of the paper. The revised version therefore contains an explicit statement in the last paragraph of the introduction about this. Specifically we note:
This paper does not contribute any original data or new empirical regression analysis. Instead it builds on a review of the academic literature (see Devigne et al., 2018), as well as a summary of publicly available data, to develop a new framework analysing policy options for cross-border venture investing.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for submitting a quality and relevant research study to JRFM. I find the research compelling and useful in two ways. First, its overall presentation provides a thorough and up-to-date view regarding cross-border VC operations, thus serves as a quite relevant reference list for researchers. Second, the policy options section is particularly stimulating and insightful.
Although the paper is almost ready for publication in the present form, I would suggest a bit of revising, especially toward the end of Policy options. It is because much of the discussion has already touched on investments but an additional discussion on science investments, R&D, and the interplay of these with the VCs will certaily help. We do not have to confine the academic discussion to a pure capital investment concern, while the public and policymakers clearly have their own agendas and motivations. One of such agendas nowadays represents the concern on scientific investments, giving rise the the above-mentioned point. This also gives the publication more relevance to emerging market economies (where much of VC activity takes place), e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0281-4.
That's why I would recommend a minor revision.
Author Response
Point 1: Thank you for submitting a quality and relevant research study to JRFM. I find the research compelling and useful in two ways. First, its overall presentation provides a thorough and up-to-date view regarding cross-border VC operations, thus serves as a quite relevant reference list for researchers. Second, the policy options section is particularly stimulating and insightful.
Although the paper is almost ready for publication in the present form, I would suggest a bit of revising, especially toward the end of Policy options. It is because much of the discussion has already touched on investments but an additional discussion on science investments, R&D, and the interplay of these with the VCs will certaily help. We do not have to confine the academic discussion to a pure capital investment concern, while the public and policymakers clearly have their own agendas and motivations. One of such agendas nowadays represents the concern on scientific investments, giving rise the the above-mentioned point. This also gives the publication more relevance to emerging market economies (where much of VC activity takes place), e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0281-4.
That's why I would recommend a minor revision.
Response 1: We are grateful to the referee for the thoughtful comments. The issue of science investment and R&D is clearly related to the issues discuss in this paper. We have therefore included a brief mention of this in our policy discussion of section 4.2. We also included the suggested reference to the Nature article, as well as a reference to Griliches work, who is considered the father of this entire literature. Specifically, we wrote:
To begin with, government play an important role in promoting basic science and applied R&D (Klette, Møen, and Griliches, 2000). Policy makers have their own preferences about what sectors should be favoured and what policies can be used for that purpose (Vuong, 2018).
