The ability of capital markets to distinguish firms of different value by the size of their initial equity offerings is attenuated when insiders can sell equity more than once. A model is developed in which there is price risk from holding equity between periods. When the uncertainty is small....

This paper studies policy in a class of economies in which information about commonly-relevant fundamentals -- such as aggregate productivity and demand conditions -- is dispersed and can not be centralized by the government. In these economies, the decentralized use of information can fail to...

We create a novel dataset to examine the nature and determinants of dual-class IPOs. We document that dual-class firms have different types of controlling shareholders and wedges between voting and economic rights. We find that the founders' wedge is largest when founders have stronger...

A questionnaire survey of investors in initial public offerings (IPO's) was undertaken to learn about patterns of investor behavior that might be relevant to theories of their underpricing. Respondents were asked for their perception of the allocation process, their concern with stockbroker or...

We present a standard model of financial innovation, in which intermediaries engineer securities with cash flows that investors seek, but modify two assumptions. First, investors (and possibly intermediaries) neglect certain unlikely risks. Second, investors demand securities with safe cash...

This note is motivated by trying to understand the macroeconomic implications of assuming that periods of financial bonanza and turmoil are driven by financial innovation and collapse in line with the "bank run" literature of the Diamond-Dybvig (1983) variety. Bypassing a host of important but,...

Is financial innovation necessary for sustaining economic growth? To address this question, we build a Schumpeterian model in which entrepreneurs earn profits by inventing better goods and profit-maximizing financiers arise to screen entrepreneurs. The model has two novel features. First,...

It is widely argued that countries can reap large gains from liberalizing their capital accounts if financial globalization is accompanied by the development of domestic institutions and financial markets. However, if liberalization does not lead to financial development, globalization can...

This paper investigates the pricing effects of financial innovation in an economy with endogenous participation and heterogeneous income risks. The introduction of non-redundant assets endogenously modifies the participation set, reduces the covariance between dividends and participants'...