No description available.

This thesis tries to circumscribe the carnavalesque narrative strategies that Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) uses in Mulata de tal (1963) to project his pessimistic vision of the social, cultural and religious mixing in Guatemala. The purpose of our work is to make an interpretation of the novel through the analysis of the carnavalesque elements of the work. To achieve this goal, we base our analysis on the Russian critic Mikhail M. Bakhtin's theories of the literary carnavalization and the dialogical principle, which we describe in the first chapter. In the following chapter we examine the formal and semantic components of the novel. In the third chapter we analyse the contrasting and deformed images that represent the social, cultural and religious mixing. Finally, in the fourth chapter we study the different social languages which the author stylizes or parodies to express his ideas in a refracted manner.

This thesis explores the rapidly growing phenomenon of equity crowdfunding from the perspective of professional investors. The aim was to contribute to the relatively thin aca-demic field of equity crowdfunding, shedding light on why it is yet to be recognized as an important instrument for raising capital and provide suggestions for improvement. The data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with Angel Investors that through their experience could identify benefits and constraints with equity crowd-funding not obvious to the crowd. Benefits of using equity crowdfunding platforms were outweighed by the identified constraints such as corporate governance issues, uncertainties concerning laws and regulations, high risk, and lack of intellectual capital. This eventually led to suggestions for improvements that included channelling the crowd investments through a mutual fund, and allowing the crowd to co-invest with Angel Investors to get around the constraints. Conclusively, the Angel Investors were positive towards the underlying ideology of equity crowdfunding of helping more entrepreneurial ventures reaching their full potential by tapping a previously unutilized source of capital, the crowd. However, there is scepticism to how the phenomenon is currently working in practice.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Diss., 2005 u.d.T.: Heckner, Robert: Vorteilhafte Anlagestrategien und Investitionsinstrumente für informelle Private-equity-Investitionen

Thesis (doctoral)--University of St. Gallen, 2008.

Master-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2008.

Zugl.: Bamberg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2005.

No description available.

No description available.

In many developed countries angel capital investment is the main source of external financing for high growth early-stage entrepreneurial companies. In spite of its importance, research in the angel capital market is still very limited. This is partly due the fact that data on angel capital investment is rare and unsystematic. This dissertation attempts to learn more about this important but not well-understood angel capital market. In particular, the first essay looks at the relationship between angels and venture capitalists in financing start-up ventures. This essay juxtaposes a complements hypothesis – angel financing is a springboard for venture capital, against a substitutes hypothesis – angels and venture capital are distinct financing methods that ought not to be combined. The result shows that companies that obtain angel financing subsequently obtain less venture capital, and vice versa. On average venture capitalist make larger investments, but this alone cannot explain the substitutes pattern. In addition, this essay reports that companies funded by venture capital perform better than angel backed companies, as measured by successful exits or revenues. Mixing angel and venture capital funding tends to be associated with worse performance. The second essay studies the role of geographic distance between the angel investors and the investee companies on the angel investment performance. This essay conjectures four possible channels that can explain the relationship between distance and the return to angel investment. It shows that distance has a positive relationship with the return to angel investment. Examining the effect of distance across different categories of angel investors, across angel investor’s locations, and across company’s location, this essay finds evidence that this positive relationship is mainly driven by the “objectivity effect”, which suggests that distant investors can evaluate the prospect of a company more objectively than close-by investors, who tend to be more biased in their judgments. The third essay examines why entrepreneurs find it generally hard to find angel investors. This essay modifies the standard search model introduced by Pissarides to explain this phenomenon. In this model, angels hide to force entrepreneurs to engage in a costly search. The result shows that angel investors adopt the hiding strategy to screen out low-productivity entrepreneurs who would otherwise inundate angels. Interestingly, social surplus is often increased when angels hide, though in some circumstances surplus may fall. / Graduate / 0505 / danvo@uvic.ca