This paper examines two different topics related to venture capital (VC) investments. The objective is to identify the main determinants of VC investments around the world. We test macro factors from the VC literature such as Initial Public Offerings (IPO), labor market rigidities, technological opportunities, stock market, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), interest rates, inflation, and corporate income taxation. We use a combination of data from 16 countries from 1995 to 2002. Plus, using risk ratings of the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG), we add political risk variables to our analysis. We examine relevant hypotheses in addressing the impact of macroeconomic and political risk factors on VC investments. In our between, fixed and random effects models, we discover that one of the most important determinants of VC investment is the total value of stocks traded. In contrary to Jeng and Wells (2000), we can only provide evidence for the significance of IPO in our fixed effects model and for only early stage VC investments. We also present that corporate income tax rate, total entrepreneurial activity, inflation, labor market rigidities, GDP growth and some of the political risk variables- investment profile, socioeconomic conditions and corruption-affect both all stages (early and expansion) investments used as a broader definition of VC, and early stage investments used as a narrower definition.