Angel investors invest billions of dollars in thousands of entrepreneurial projects annually, far more than the number of firms that obtain venture capital. Previous research has calculated realized internal rates of return on angel investments, but empirical estimates of expected returns have...

We test and offer support to Merton's (1987) theory that difference in a stock's investor recognition affects its cost of capital. In the U.S. market, using the breadth of ownership among retail investors as a proxy for investor recognition, we show that a long-short portfolio based on the...