Poor loan quality is often attributed to loan officers exercising poor judgment. A potential solution is to base loans on hard information alone. However, we find other consequences of bypassing discretion stemming from loan officer incentives and limits of hard information verifiability. Using...

We use unique micro-level depositor data for a bank that faced a run due to a shock to its solvency to study whether depositors monitor banks. Specifically, we examine depositor withdrawal patterns in response to a timeline of private and public signals of the bank's financial health. In...

We analyze how increased access to financing affects firm total factor productivity (TFP) by exploiting a natural experiment following interstate banking deregulations which increased access to bank financing. We find that firms' TFP increases after their states implement these deregulations....

This survey reviews the growing body of academic work on venture capital. It lays out the major data sources used. It examines the work on venture capital investments in companies, looking at issues of selection, contracting, post-investment services and exits. The survey considers recent work...

We survey more than 1,000 CEOs and CFOs to understand how capital is allocated, and decision-making authority is delegated, within firms. We find that CEOs are least likely to share or delegate decision-making authority in mergers and acquisitions, relative to delegation of capital structure,...

We analyze institutional allocation in initial public offerings (IPOs) using a new dataset of US offerings between 1997 and 1998. We document a positive relationship between institutional allocation and day one IPO returns. This is partly explained by the practice of giving institutions more...

We use a new data set that tracks U.S. firms from their birth over two decades to understand the life cycle dynamics and outcomes (both successes and failures) of VC- and non-VC financed firms. We first ask to what market-wide and firm-level characteristics venture capitalists respond in...

The importance of an investor's organizational structure is increasingly recognized in modern finance. This paper examines the role of banks in the US venture capital market. Theory suggests that unlike independent venture capital firms, banks can seek complementarities between their venture...

This paper presents some of the first large-scale survey evidence linking optimism to major economic choices. We create a novel measure of optimism using the Survey of Consumer Finance by comparing a person's self-reported life expectancy to that implied by statistical tables. Optimists are more...

This article examines the practice of tying,' which occurs when an underwriter lends to an issuer around the time of a public securities offering. We examine whether there are efficiencies from tying lending and underwriting which lead to benefits for issuers and underwriters. We find evidence...