We empirically analyze the determinants of Initial Public Offering (IPO) underpricing using panel data for 29 countries over the period 1988-2005. Our hypotheses stress the importance of institutional and legal factors in explaining cross-country variations. We find that increased protection of...

We derive the optimal contract between a principal and a liquidity-constrained agent in a stochastically repeated environment. The contract comprises a court-enforceable explicit bonus rule and an implicit fixed salary promise that must be self-enforcing. Since the agent’s rent increases with...