We examine how firms can manage the costs of issuing common equity through their choice of SEC registration strategy. Firms that use unallocated shelf, a deregulated registration procedure, pay lower underwriter fees and access the market faster than similar firms that use the slower traditional...

We explore how the misaligned incentives of underwriters and investors can contribute to boom-and-bust cycles in capital market transactions. Underwriters, whose rewards are transaction-driven and largely front-loaded, have incentives to complete deals to generate fees. Investors, who base their...

Rule 10b-18 is the only guidance the SEC provides for open market stock repurchases. Fashioned as a safe harbor without disclosure, 10b-18 conformity is unverifiable with public data. We use privately disclosed data to document claimed and actual compliance. While the level of compliance is...

Little is known about the timing and execution of open market repurchases. U.S. firms are under no obligation to disclose when they are trading, and generally report only quarterly changes in shares outstanding. We use 64 firms' supplementally disclosed repurchase trading data to provide the...

Rule 10b-18 is the only guidance the SEC provides for open market stock repurchases. Fashioned as a safe harbor without disclosure, 10b-18 conformity is unverifiable with public data. We use privately disclosed data to document claimed and actual compliance. While the level of compliance is...

Managers of firms going public usually do not sell their own shares at the initial public offering. Instead, they often sell a portion of their shares at the end of the lockup period. We develop a model in which the manager strategically underprices the IPO in order to maximize his wealth from...

During the mid-1990s, 30% of firms that completed a seasoned equity offering (SEO) within three years of their initial public offering (IPO) switched lead underwriter. This article provides evidence on why they switched. Contrary to predictions of prior research, there is little evidence that...

Despite underwriters' efforts to balance supply and demand in the IPO price setting mechanism, we show that the market accurately predicts (in the first-day return and volume) the direction but not the full magnitude of underwriters' pricing errors. That is, first-day winners continue to be...

Open market repurchases are hypothesized to widen bid-ask spreads due to information asymmetries. We design and implement a powerful test to detect evidence of a spread narrowing quot;competing-market-makerquot; effect on corporate repurchase days. Our study is unique in that we identify 2190...