In the first essay, "Do Firms Knowingly Sell Overvalued Equity?", I develop a simple equilibrium model which shows that insider trading around seasoned equity offerings (SEO) depends on both the quality of issuing firms and insiders' exogenous consumption shocks, neither of which are known by...

We develop a theory of initial public offering (IPO) underpricing based on differentiated underwriting services and localized competition. Even though a large number of investment banks compete for IPOs, if issuers care about non-price dimensions of underwriting, then the industry structure is...

European stock exchanges have repeatedly opened second markets to list small companies. We explain the motivation for the creation of these second markets, and the reasons why many of them have failed. We find that the average long-run performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) on second...

In this survey, I criticize the ability of popular asymmetric information-based models to explain the magnitude of the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) that is observed. I suggest that the quantitative magnitude of underpricing can be explained with a market structure in which...

During 1980-2000, an average of 310 companies per year went public in the U.S. Since the technology bubble burst in 2000, the average has been only 99 initial public offerings (IPOs) per year, with the drop especially precipitous among small firms. Many have blamed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002...

Despite recent innovations in entrepreneurial finance, particularly at the early stage of business creation, many new and young companies continue to face hurdles to acquire capital.The Kauffman Foundation addressed current challenges and opportunities in financing entrepreneurial growth, a key...

A popular view is that private equity (PE) firms tend to expropriate other stakeholders of their portfolio companies. Bonds offered during 1992-2011 by companies after their initial public offerings (IPOs) do not reflect this view. We find that yield spreads on bonds offered by PE-backed...