Using unique U.S. Census data sets, we analyze how entrepreneurial firms' product market characteristics affect their choice between going public, being acquired, or remaining private. Size, total factor productivity (TFP), sales growth, capital expenditure, market share, access to private...

We analyze the role of venture capitalists (VCs) in transforming the management and governance of China's private family firms pre-IPO. We show, causally, that VC-backed family firms are more likely than non-VC backed family firms to experience departures of family members from top management...

We make use of hand-collected data on a large sample of entrepreneurial firms to analyze the effect of venture capital (VC) backing on the management quality of firms going public and the effect of both VC-backing and management quality on IPO variables. We hypothesize that VC-backing will be...

We hypothesize that VC-backing garners greater “investor attention” (Merton (1987)) for IPOs, allowing IPO underwriters to perform two information-related roles more efficiently during the book-building and road-show process: information dissemination, where the lead underwriter disseminates...

We analyze the roles of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists (VC), and the government in financing fundamental innovations, defined as those with positive social value net of development costs, but negative net present values to innovating firms. We first analyze the case where the entrepreneur,...

We analyze the role of trademarks in entrepreneurial finance, hypothesizing that trademarks play two important roles: a “protective” role, leading to better product market performance; and an “informational” role, signaling higher firm quality to investors. We develop testable hypotheses...

We analyze how corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) differ from independent venture capitalists (IVCs) in nurturing innovation in entrepreneurial firms. Using the NBER Patent Citation database, we find that CVCs help their portfolio firms achieve a higher degree of innovation productivity, as...

Using a hand-collected data set of private firm acquisitions and IPOs, this paper develops the first empirical analysis in the literature of the “IPO valuation premium puzzle,” which refers to a situation where many private firms choose to be acquired rather than to go public at higher...

The objective of this paper is to develop a theoretical analysis of “mandatory convertibles,” which are securities that automatically (“mandatorily”) convert to common stock on a pre-specified date. We consider a firm facing a financial market characterized by asymmetric information and...

We analyze the dynamics of private firms' exit choice between IPOs and acquisitions and the valuation premium of IPOs over acquisitions from pre-2000 to post-2000. We first develop a two-period theoretical model, where in each period, entrepreneurs with private information about the viability of...