The role of law and public-private collaboration in promoting innovative firms in Brazil: the case of the BNDES and the 'criatec fund'

This paper presents the result of a qualitative empirical research about the "Criatec Fund", a venture capital fund, privately managed and directed to innovative firms, that was created in 2007 by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). The paper discusses the role of law in the implementation of the Criatec Fund in three different legal dimensions: structural, regulatory and contractual. Based on interviews, this paper tries to test some hypothesis previously formulated by some scholars that studied new financial policies created by the BNDES. This study explains the institutional arrangements of this seed capital policy and the role of flexible legal instruments in the execution of this peculiar type of public-private partnership. It also poses some questions to the "law and development agenda" based on some insights from the economic sociology of law.