Venture capital : public investments as a driver for local innovation. Evidence from European regions

In this work we are going to talk about venture capital. Venture capital is the contribution of risk capital by an investor in order to finance the start-up or growth of activities in sectors with high growth potential. The participation, usually held for a long period of time, is in small and medium sized businesses and it is aimed at fostering the development of the enterprises. They have a very important role in the development of the innovation through their help to young companies, encouraging the creation of new businesses and therefore jobs. The aim of the work is a comparative study between public and private initiatives of venture capital. We wanted to answer the following questions: 1) What’s the help of private venture capitalists to local companies? Can public VCs have more focus on regional enterprises? 2) Have public Venture capitalists generally a bigger number of participations than private ones?