Economic theory, as well as commonly-stated views of practitioners, suggests that market downturns can affect both the ability and manner in which firms raise external financing. Theory suggests that downturns should be associated with a shift toward less information-sensitive securities, as...

Publicly-traded debt securities differ on a number of dimensions, including quality, maturity, seniority, security, and convertibility. Finance research has provided a number of theories as to why firms should issue debt with different features; yet, there is very little empirical work testing...

This paper examines the extent to which investment financing and market-timing explanations motivate public equity offers. We consider a sample of 16,958 initial public offerings and 12,373 seasoned equity offerings from 38 countries between 1990 and 2003. We provide estimates of the change in...

This paper considers the question of whether raising capital is an important reason why firms go public. Using a sample of 16,958 initial public offerings from 38 countries between 1990 and 2003, we consider differences between firms that sell new, primary shares to the public, and existing...