"The lack of data on private firms has made it difficult to empirically examine theories of why firms go public. However, both public and private banks must disclose financial information to regulators. We exploit this requirement to explore the goingpublic decision. Our results indicate that...

"We hypothesize that banks become better able to manage acquisitions, and investors become better able to value those acquisitions, as these parties "learn-by-observing" information that spills-over from previous bank M&As. We find evidence consistent with these hypotheses for 216 M&As of large,...

"Despite operating under substantial regulatory constraints, we find that commercial banks manage their investments largely consistent with the predictions of portfolio choice models with capital market imperfections. Based on 1990-2002 data for small (assets less than $1 billion) U.S....