Introduction: Funding Gaps

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.