Divestment, Entrepreneurial Incentives, and the Life Cycle of the Firm
研究发现企业家撤资存在时间不一致问题，导致过度撤资和效率损失，可能抵消上市收益；风险投资家能缓解此问题，并影响最优上市时机。
Abstract: An entrepreneur who wants to divest his firm suffers a time‐inconsistency problem: divesting a stake creates an incentive to divest further since he does not internalize the arising agency costs for the stake already sold. This paper shows that this leads to excessive divestment in equilibrium and entails efficiency losses which can offset any potential divestment gains. As a result, firms may stay private even if there are large gains from going public. We show that venture capitalists can reduce these inefficiencies. This is because they have influence over a firm's divestment decisions and can distinguish between an excessive and a desirable dilution of equity (such as in response to liquidity shocks). We also show that the divestment inefficiency gives rise to an optimal time of going public, which trades off the gains from going public early (higher divestment gains) with its costs (higher divestment inefficiency).