社会关系网络与风险投资的退出业绩——基于效率与效益视角的双重考察

Social Relationship Network and Withdrawal Performance of Venture Capital: Investigation from Efficiency and Effectiveness Perspectives

在风险投资过程中,筹资、投资和退出是风险投资的主要经济活动,其中退出是风险投资中最重要的环节。从社会关系网络的理论出发,已有研究多从退出率的角度衡量风险投资的退出业绩,本文则将退出业绩分拆为效率和效益的双重视角,分析了风险投资通过2000年至2014年间的联合投资事件构建的社会关系网络对其退出业绩的影响。研究发现:风险投资所处的社会关系网络位置能够显著提高退出效率和退出效益。进一步地,本文对风险投资获取较高退出业绩的渠道进行了考察,实证结果表明:风险投资所处的度数中心度等社会关系网络位置越有利,其投资公司的质量就越高,具体表现在IPO前的会计信息质量越高、IPO后的研发产出越多、IPO后的会计业绩表现越优秀。本文的结论对风险投资提高退出业绩具有一定的实践意义。

In the venture capital market, fund raising, investment and withdrawal are all prime economic activities, wherein withdrawal is the most important link in the field of venture capital. Previous studies have probed into the factors which might influence withdrawal performance of venture capital, including economic cycle, venture capital reputation, investment experience and operation scale. From the perspective of social relationship network, this paper divides withdrawal performance into the dual perspectives of efficiency and benefits and illustrates 100 venture capital institutions with maximum investment behaviors between 2001 and 2014 as the research subjects. Based on the joint investment events during the 15 years in the 100 institutions, this paper delineates social relationship network draft among these institutions to obtain degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality and structural hole degree indicators and starts from the perspectives of efficiency and benefits to examine the influences of social relationship network on withdrawal performance. First of all, this paper takes the overall withdrawal rate of venture capital during Sampling period as the measurement indicator to calculate the withdrawal efficiency. As testified by the empirical research results, social relationship network of venture capital has prominent positive influences on the withdrawal efficiency. Secondly, this paper illustrates 506 withdrawal events of the 100 venture capital institutions in the form of IPO through Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2000 to 2014. The empirical research results prove that in case of higher degree centrality of venture capital, if investment companies have shorter history from entrepreneurship to IPO, they would easily withdraw the venture capital at a faster speed. All of such results indicate that venture capital in critical positions of social relationship network has more chances to obtain necessary resources and information, more prominent information advantages and information controlling abilities and faster risk investment withdrawal operations. Subsequently, it observes the significantly positive correlation between venture capital degree centrality indicator and IPO, and between corporate PE and buy-and-hold returns（market returns one year after holding and IPO）, which means that venture capital withdrawal has better benefits in critical positions of social network. Finally, this paper explores how venture capital could obtain better performance in advantageous social network positions, concluding that social relationship network of venture capital could improve the quality of invested companies, including higher accounting information quality before IPO, more research and development output after IPO and higher accounting performance after IPO. It has the following contributions. First of all, existing studies mostly measure successful withdrawal（Dang Xinghua et al., 2011 ）, withdrawal rate（Hochberg et al., 2007）and withdrawal performance of venture capital. Little attention has been paid to the studies on the two indicators, namely withdrawal efficiency and withdrawal benefits. This paper starts from the perspectives of efficiency and benefits to examine the influences of social relationship network built by venture capital through joint investment events on withdrawal performance. And it further explores how venture capital could obtain higher withdrawal performance and enrich relevant studies in the field of venture capital. Secondly, this paper is the beneficial expansion of relevant literature documents related to social relationship network in Chinese venture capital market. Existing studies mainly start from the perspective of individual characteristics of venture capital to evaluate the withdrawal performance of venture capital. By placing venture capital companies under the background of social relationship network, this paper refers to sociology research methods to analyze and test the influences of social relationship network on withdrawal performance. It is the beneficial expansion for literature documents in the field of social relationship. Thirdly, risk investment is a high-risk and high-return process. Venture capital always tries to reduce uncertainty and elevate benefits. If venture capital expects to obtain better withdrawal performance, it requires to reduce the uncertainty of benefits and obtain more scarce resources ＆ information. Therefore, venture capital should also consider its position in social network while improving its investment skills or accumulating investment experience. In this sense, this paper has practice meanings for venture capital to elevate withdrawal performance.