Private equity has reaped large rewards in recent years. We claim that one major reason for this success is due to the corporate governance advantages of private equity over the public corporation. We argue that the development of substantial derivative contracts and trading has significantly...

Flotation costs represent a significant loss of capital to firms and are positively related to information asymmetry between managers and outside investors. We measure a firm's information asymmetry by its accounting information quality based on two extensions of the Dechow and Dichev earnings...

This essay surveys the extant literature and adds to the empirical evidence on issuance activity,flotation costs, and valuation effects of security offerings. We focus primarily on public offerings of equity for cash, although we also review and present new evidence on debt offerings and private...

We study merger and acquisition (Mamp;A) payment choices of European bidders for publicly and privately held targets in the 1997-2000 period. Europe is an ideal venue for studying the importance of corporate governance in making Mamp;A payment choices, given the large number of closely held...

The 'new issues puzzle' is that stocks of common stock issuers subsequently underperform nonissuers matched on size and book-to-market ratio. With 7000 seasoned equity and debt issues, we document that issuer underperformance reflects lower systematic risk exposure for issuing firms relative to...

We study IPO pricing when underwriters are venture capital investors in issuers and test three hypotheses concerning the effects of underwriter share ownership on the IPO underwriting and pricing processes. We find that venture investments by underwriters significantly reduce IPO underpricing;...

We examine the quality of brokerage firm analyst coverage when they have venture capital investments in IPO issuers. We explore whether combining these activities compromises the objectivity of analyst reports given brokerage firm incentives to support IPO issues where they are shareholders....

We analyze financial contracting in start-ups backed by corporate venture capitalists (CVCs). CVCs' strategic goals can economically hurt or benefit the start-ups, depending on product market relationships between start-ups and CVC parents. Empirically, start-ups receive funding from both...

Agency theory and optimal contracting theory posit opposing roles and shareholder wealth effects for corporate inside directors. We evaluate these competing theories using the labor market for outside directorships to differentiate inside directors. Firms with inside directors holding outside...

Using a dataset of 28,635 firms in 45 countries, this study investigates the motivations for family-controlled business groups. We provide new evidence consistent with the argument that particular group structures emerge not only to perpetuate control, but also to alleviate financing constraints...