Close to 50% of municipal bonds are prepackaged with insurance at the time of issue. We offer a tax-based rationale for the emergence of third-party insurance of tax-exempt bonds. We argue that insurance adds value as it allows a third party to become, in a probabilistic sense, an issuer of...

"Stapled finance" is a loan commitment arranged by a seller in an M&A setting. Whoever wins the bidding contest has the option (not the obligation) to accept this loan commitment. We show that stapled finance increases bidding competition by subsidizing weak bidders, who raise their bids and...

We derive a behavioral measure of the IPO decision-maker's satisfaction with the underwriter's performance based on <link rid="b23">Loughran and Ritter (2002)</link> and assess its ability to explain the decision-maker's choice among underwriters in "subsequent" securities offerings. Controlling for other known...

Many financial markets are characterized by strong relationships and networks, rather than arm's-length, spot market transactions. We examine the performance consequences of this organizational structure in the context of relationships established when VCs syndicate portfolio company...

We provide evidence that firms attempting IPOs condition offer terms and the decision whether to carry through with an offering on the experience of their primary market contemporaries. Moreover, while initial returns and IPO volume are positively correlated in the aggregate, the correlation is...

IPO underpricing reached astronomical levels during 1999 and 2000. We show that the regime shift in initial returns and other elements of pricing behavior can be at least partially accounted for by marked changes in pre-IPO ownership structure and insider selling behavior over the period, which...

We document widespread changes to the historical I/B/E/S analyst stock recommendations database. Across seven I/B/E/S downloads, obtained between 2000 and 2007, we find that between 6,580 (1.6%) and 97,582 (21.7%) of matched observations are different from one download to the next. The changes...

We examine whether irrational behavior among small (retail) investors drives post-IPO prices. We use prices from the grey market (the when-issued market that precedes European IPOs) to proxy for small investors' valuations. High grey market prices (indicating overoptimism) are a very good...

We investigate whether analyst behavior influenced banks' likelihood of winning underwriting mandates for a sample of 16,625 U.S. debt and equity offerings in 1993-2002. We control for the strength of the issuer's investment banking relationships with potential competitors for the mandate, prior...