How Long Do External Capital Constraints Matter?
) (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Abstract Start-ups mostly have only limited internal financing. Post-entry performance should thus strongly depend on the availability of new external capital. In this study we analyze the impact of financial constraints on the performance of Swiss start-ups. Since we use cohort data, we have for some start-ups data at different points in time. This allows us to analyze whether the effect of the availability of external capital on firm performance changes with increasing age of the firms. To measure the impact of external capital as a whole, we include separate indicators for debt and venture capital constraints. Using different performance measures, we find that debt constraints are not only a problem of the first years. While the negative impact of debt constraints on firm survival disappears with increasing age of the firms, profit is persistently negative affected by debt constraints. Debt constraints, however, do not impact
