We test the predictions of Titman (1984) and Berk, Stanton, and Zechner (2010) by examining the effect of leverage on labor costs. Leverage has a significantly positive impact on cash, equity-based, and total compensation of chief executive officers (CEOs). Compensation of new CEOs hired from...

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 consider an incumbent who wishes to sell equity to outsiders at an IPO to implement his firm’s project. He may be talented (lower cost of effort, comparative advantage in project-implementation) or untalented. The project may have high (intrinsically more valuable, but showing less signs of...

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...

We address the question: At what stage in its life should a firm go public, rather than undertake its projects using private equity financing? In our model, a firm may raise external financing either by placing shares privately with a risk-averse venture capitalist, or by selling shares in an...

We model firms' choice between bank loans and publicly traded debt, allowing for debt-renegotiation in the event of financial distress. Entrepreneurs, with private information about their probability of financial distress, borrow from banks (multi-period players) or issue bonds to implement...

Do institutional investors possess private information about SEOs? If they do, do they use this private information to trade in a direction opposite to this information (consistent with a quot;manipulative tradingquot; role) or in the same direction as this information (consistent with a direct...

We study the issuance of tracking stocks, a form of corporate restructuring that has recently become very popular, and compare it with spin-offs and equity carve-outs. We find that parents and subsidiaries of tracking stock firms are more related than those that undertake the other two forms of...

We develop a theory of new project financing and equity carve-outs under heterogeneous beliefs among investors in the equity market. We consider a setting where an employee of a firm generates an idea for a new project that can be financed either by issuing equity against the future cash flows...