Daniel Wiberg

Daniel Wiberg started working as a doctoral candidate at JIBS in September 2002. Below you find a summary of his research project:

Research

Preliminary thesis title is Institutional Ownership and the Role of Institutional Investors as Owners and Suppliers of Venture Capital. During the last two decades the mutual fund industry in Sweden as well as abroad, has grown dramatically. At present around 30% of the total capital at the Swedish stock exchange is under management by mutual funds or similar institutional investors. Intuitively and according to economic theory these institutional owners are more passive in relation to management than traditional owners. What this tells us is that we have a phenomenon of a large part of the capital stock not being actively managed in the sense of traditional industrial organisation theory. Even thought the institutions themselves may prefer a less active management, in favour of more liquid holdings, they are also bound by regulatory rules. The regulations may for instance prevent holdings in not publicly traded stocks, such as start-ups and small entrepreneurial businesses. This posses a problem for the creation of new firms and entrepreneurial activity, a problem that may in fact severely stagnate the economic growth.

Evidence continues to accumulate that entrepreneurial activity has a significant positive relation to a countries economic growth. The most thorough study of entrepreneurial activity and its role for the overall economic activity is the recently presented Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM-20002) report, in which it is clearly stated that entrepreneurial activity have a vital role in economic growth. The report also stresses the importance of financial support for start-ups and growing businesses.

How financial support in the form of outside investments such as venture capital and business angels etc. relates to economic growth is a somewhat unexplored area of research. Which are the main suppliers of this type of financial support for growing entrepreneurial businesses, and how important is the role of this financial support? To address these questions one also need to explore the Ownership characteristics of institutional investors. These characteristics must then to bee scrutinised and related to economic growth and entrepreneurial activity.

Teaching