Pro forma estimation of financial statements often builds on constant ratios to sales revenue. While constant ratios may be relevant for established firms operating in predictable industries, they yield noninformative and possibly misleading information when applied to new firms, and...

This paper is a first attempt at differentiating the problems of finance of the privately held small businesses from their larger counterparts. Small businesses, though not concerned with the problems and opportunities associated with publicly traded firms, have different types of complexities,...

Two main approaches have been utilized to explain the relationship between entrepreneurs and their investors. The first is based on the separation of ownership and management i.e. the so-called principal-agent approach. The second emphasizes trust and cooperation in the relationship. This...

The paper presents an adverse selection-based explanation of the fact that some entrepreneurs choose to finance multiple projects together by issuing a single security and other entrepreneurs decide to finance each project separately. We consider the financing problem of an entrepreneur who has...

This paper models the borrowing decision of a small firm seeking a bank loan when it can optionally hire, at a cost, an independent external auditor to convey its risk characteristics to lenders. The analysis shows that a necessary condition for a potential borrower to prefer having an audit to...

This paper uses an agency theory perspective to develop an understanding of the determinants of auditor change for small firms in the United Kingdom. The paper, therefore, extends the existing literature (see Williams [22] and Francis and Wilson [9]) from a consideration of auditor change for...

Why do some early stage ventures perform remarkably well while others fail? Is there a fairly accurate way to predict which emerging growth business will become a high performing success story and which a low performing disaster? Is there a way for investors to increase the likelihood of...

Unlike most other small firms, there is an excellent record of the initial equity capitalization details of banking organizations when they are formed, as well as subsequent changes, because of the chartering application and reporting requirements of the banking regulatory authorities. By...

This paper presents evidence on the failed initial public offerings that used best efforts contracts. Out of 732 best efforts IPOs attempted in 1980-84, 186 IPOs (about one fourth) failed to meet minimum sales requirement and were subsequently withdrawn. Offerings with greater uncertainty about...

Previous studies of large versus small company performance, though frequent, have not produced a clear answer as to whether large companies outperform small companies or vice versa. This article highlights retentions - the fact that different companies have different dividend policies —as a...