We develop a valuation model for venture capital-backed companies and apply it to 135 U.S. unicorns – private companies with reported valuations above $1 billion. We value unicorns using financial terms from legal filings and find reported unicorn post-money valuation average 50% above fair...

Hedge fund managers are compensated via management fees on the assets under management (AUM) and incentive fees indexed to the high-water mark (HWM). We study the effects of managerial skills (alpha) and compensation on dynamic leverage choices and the valuation of fees and investors' payoffs....

This paper develops a framework for analyzing transactions that transfer a company's controlling block from an existing controller to a new controller. This framework is used to compare the market rule, which is followed in the United States, with the equal opportunity rule, which prevails in...

The expected time- and risk-adjusted cumulative return on any asset equals one at all horizons. Nonetheless, I show that a typical asset's realized time- and risk-adjusted cumulative return tends to zero almost surely. As a corollary, the value of a typical long-dated asset is driven by extreme...

This paper decomposes both the market sensitivity and the interest-rate sensitivity of bank stock into on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet components. It derives these constituent and often-offsetting sensitivities from a nonstationary three-equation model that employs accounting and...

A risk-averse entrepreneur with access to a profitable venture needs to raise funds from investors. She cannot indefinitely commit her human capital to the venture, which limits the firm's debt capacity, distorts investment and compensation, and constrains the entrepreneur's risk-sharing. This...

Buyout booms form in response to declines in the aggregate risk premium. We document that the equity risk premium is the primary determinant of buyout activity rather than credit-specific conditions. We articulate a simple explanation for this phenomenon: a low risk premium increases the present...

A model of capacity choice and utilization is developedconsistent with value maximization when investment is irreversibleand future demand is uncertain. Investment requires the fullvalue of a marginal unit of capacity to be at least as large asits full cost. The former includes the value of the...

A firm is subject to `economic exposure' if changes in exchange rates affect the firm's value, as measured by the present value of its future cash flows. This paper shows that in many forms of competition, including the most commonly studied case of monopoly, the economic exposure of an...

The paper studies under what conditions the value of the firm occasionally increases for a while before it suddenly drops, like a "bubble". We consider the environment where the trend of net cash flow from a firm's production depends on uncertain quality of a manager, and the manager is...