Funding gaps: A symposium

Theoretical and empirical foundations of government policies to plug alleged business funding gaps are highly controversial but rarely subject to wide-ranging in-depth debate. This symposium from major scholars in the field provides a counterbalance. Topics addressed cover the theory of lending under asymmetric information; its implications for overlending; relationship lending as a market solution to information asymmetries; government emulation of private sector decision-making to eliminate underprovision of high tech equity and theoretically-based empirical work testing for funding deficiencies in the high tech sector, Despite the very different and potentially contradictory contributions the result is, surprisingly, a set of mutually agreed policy conclusions.