Table 4.
Mechanisms and Channels – Investor Experience. The analysis covers 62 bi-monthly periods from 01/01/2018 to 07/31/2020 and 126 countries. Treated is an indicator that takes the value of 1 for investments in ventures with pandemic-related activities, and 0 otherwise. First Case is an indicator that takes the value of 1 for periods after the beginning of the spread of COVID-19 (i.e., after the first confirmed case) in country c, and 0 otherwise. Generalist VC is an indicator that takes the value of 1 for VCs that have completed deals in more than 1 NACE sector, and 0 otherwise. Young VC is an indicator that takes the value of 1 for VCs in the bottom quartile of the age distribution of all VC firms, and 0 otherwise. Fad is an indicator that takes the value of 1 for pandemic-related deals that contain words that attract a lot of attention on the web (words with above-median search amount). For each bi-monthly period, we use Google Trends to capture number of searches for all keywords from our definition of pandemic-related deal and set Fad equal to 1 if the Google Trends index of the keywords in the deal synopsis is greater than 50, and 0 otherwise. The linear combinations of coefficients show point estimates, and statistical significance, of the treatment effect on the outcome variables for delas with generalist VCs (A) + (B), young VCs (A) + (C), or deals containing words that attract a lot of attention (A) + (D), respectively. The table reports coefficient estimates followed by standard errors, clustered at country level, in parentheses. ***, **, and * indicate statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% level, respectively.
| VC invested amount |
Number VC transactions |
||||||
| Dependent Variable | (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
| Treated × First Case | (A) | 0.359*** | 0.308*** | 0.461*** | 0.053*** | 0.037*** | 0.064*** |
| (0.109) | (0.085) | (0.133) | (0.016) | (0.012) | (0.027) | ||
| Treated × First Case × Generalist VC | (B) | −0.177 | −0.041** | ||||
| (0.135) | (0.019) | ||||||
| Treated × First Case × Young VC | (C) | −0.144** | −0.017** | ||||
| (0.073) | (0.007) | ||||||
| Treated × First Case × Fad | (D) | −0.063 | −0.009 | ||||
| (0.099) | (0.013) | ||||||
| Linear Combination (A) + (B) | 0.182* | 0.013 | |||||
| Linear Combination (A) + (C) | 0.164* | 0.019 | |||||
| Linear Combination (A) + (D) | 0.398*** | 0.054*** | |||||
| Observations | 31,248 | 31,248 | 23,436 | 31,248 | 31,248 | 23,436 | |
| Adj. R-squared | 0.597 | 0.577 | 0.665 | 0.757 | 0.732 | 0.859 | |
| Country-Deal Category Fixed Effects | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Time Fixed Effects | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Country-Deal Category Trend | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |