The recent financial crisis has led to a major debate about fair-value accounting. Many critics have argued that fair-value accounting, often also called mark-to-market accounting, has significantly contributed to the financial crisis or, at least, exacerbated its severity. In this paper, we...

The recent financial crisis has led to a vigorous debate about the pros and cons of fair-value accounting (FVA). This debate presents a major challenge for FVA going forward and standard setters' push to extend FVA into other areas. In this article, we highlight four important issues as an...

We study the returns the venture capital and private equity investment from 221 venture capital and private equity funds that are part of 72 venture capital and private equity firms, 5040 entrepreneurial firms (3826 venture capital and 1214 private equity), and spanning 32 years (1971 2003) and...

We analyze governance with a dataset on investments of venture capitalists in 3848 portfolio firms in 39 countries from North and South America, Europe and Asia spanning 1971-2003. We find that cross-country differences in Legality have a significant impact on the governance structure of...

This paper analyses the effects of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market on real investment decisions in emerging industries. We first propose a model of IPO timing based on divergence of opinion among investors and short-sale constraints. Using a real option approach, we show that firms are...

We study to what extent firms spread out their debt maturity dates across time, which we call granularity of corporate debt. We consider the role of debt granularity using a simple model in which a firm's inability to roll over expiring debt causes inefficiencies, such as costly asset sales or...

We analyze governance with a dataset on investments of venture capitalists in 3848 portfolio firms in 39 countries from North and South America, Europe and Asia spanning 1971-2003. We find that cross-country differences in Legality have a significant impact on the governance structure of...

Suppliers play a major role in innovation processes. We analyze ownership allocations and the choice of R&D technology in vertical R&D cooperations. Given incomplete contracts on the R&D outcome, there is a tradeoff between R&D specifically designed towards a manufacturer (increasing investment...

This chapter analyzes the role of financial accounting in the German financial system. It starts from the common perception that German accounting is rather uninformative. This characterization is appropriate from the perspective of an arms length or outside investor and when confined to the...

When liquidity plays an important role as in times of financial crisis, asset prices in some markets may reflect the amount of liquidity available in the market rather than the future earning power of the asset. Mark-to-market accounting is not a desirable way to assess the solvency of a...