We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. We use a unique firm level data set of approximately 24 million firms in nearly 100 countries in 2004 and 1999, which enables us to present both cross-country and industry...

We exploit demographic variation to identify the effect of dividend demand on corporate payout policy. Retail investors tend to hold local stocks and older investors prefer dividend-paying stocks. Together, these tendencies generate geographically-varying demand for dividends. Firms...

The American population is aging and changes in the population’s age structure are leading to an aging of the nation’s workforce. In addition, changes to age specific participation rates are exacerbating the aging of the national labor force. An important challenge for firms and...

In many countries, banks lend to firms controlled by the bank?s owners. We examine the benefits of related lending using a newly assembled dataset for Mexico. Related lending is prevalent (20% of commercial loans) and takes place on better terms than arm?s-length lending (annual interest rates...

This paper examines investments made by 13 angel groups across 21 countries. We compare applicants just above and below the funding cutoff and find that these angel investors have a positive impact on the growth, performance, and survival of firms as well as their follow-on fundraising. The...

This paper considers a sample of 3,001 private investments in public equities (PIPEs). Issuing firms tend to be small and poorly performing, so have limited access to traditional sources of finance. To attract capital, they offer shares in a PIPE at a substantial discount to the market price,...

This paper explores the necessary conditions for outside equity financing when insiders, that is managers or entrepreneurs, are self-interested and cash flows are not verifiable. Two control mechanisms are contrasted: a partnership,' in which outside investors can commit assets for a specified...

This paper examines the large, steady, and continuing growth of the Big Three index fund managers—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors. We show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and that voting in most significant public companies will come...

This paper studies the long-term effect of hedge fund activism on the productivity of target firms using plant-level information from the U.S. Census Bureau. A typical target firm improves its production efficiency in the three years after an activist intervention, and the improvements are most...

We investigate the relationship between economic growth and lagged international capital flows, disaggregated into FDI, portfolio investment, equity investment, and short-term debt. We follow about 100 countries during 1990-2010 when emerging markets became more integrated into the international...