"This research is about why people do the things they do," Wongsunwai explains. "If people running a company have their wealth tied to the price of the company stock, they will resort to a lot of ways to keep the stock prices as high as they can." If companies are trying to inflate prices, "the VCs might be tempted to let their monitoring role lapse a little bit," he points out, because if stock prices go up, the VC benefits as well. The highest-quality VCs though, have a counter-incentive: their reputations. "If VCs don't have the skills needed to influence managerial decisions, or if they choose not to apply their skills at the time their companies are going public," he concludes, "then we will see negative consequences."