We examine how political connections impact the process of going public. Specifically, we test how political connections impact the pricing of newly offered shares, the magnitude of underpricing, and the fixed cost of going public. Based on experiences of the new public firms in the Chinese...

While the signalling hypothesis has played a prominent role as the economic rationale associated with the initial public offering (IPO) underpricing puzzle (Welch, 1989), the empirical evidence on it has been mixed at best (Jegadeesh, Weinstein and Welch, 1993; Michaely and Shaw, 1994). This paper...

This paper examines through various channels the effects of CEO social network heterogeneity on firm value. We construct four measures of heterogeneity based on demographic attributes, intellectual backgrounds, professional experience, and geographical exposures of individuals in the CEO social...

We analyse the determinants of the variation of option-adjusted credit spreads (OASs) on a unique database that enlarges the traditional scope of analysis to more disaggregated indexes (combining industry, grade and maturity levels), new variables (volumes of sales and purchases of institutional...

This paper reviews the first thirty years of finance research and education in Finland, starting with publication of the first dissertation in finance in 1977. That was also the year when the first department of finance was established in Finland – among the first in the Nordic countries. This...

The paper considers a model in which limited liability causes an asset substitution problem for banks. The problem can at times become so severe that the current regulatory framework – based on a combination of effectively full deposit insurance, minimum capital requirements and prudential...

The paper shows that uninformed finance gives rise to excessive entry, both in human-capital-intensive and in conventional industries when the financial institutions cannot identify the entrepreneurial talent. Introduction of informed capital (eg venture capital finance) with superior screening...

This study uses the current financial crisis as a quasi-experiment to examine whether and to what extent corporate boards affect the performance of firms. Using cumulative stock returns over the crisis to measure of firm performance, we find that board independence, as traditionally defined,...

We investigate how borrowers’ corporate governance influences bank loan contracting terms in emerging markets and how this relation varies across countries with different country-level governance. We find that borrowers with stronger corporate governance obtain favorable contracting terms with...