We assess how owner's commitment to a firm influences the firm cost of capital, and whether the relation between the former and the latter is the consequence of the owner's higher opportunity cost of capital resulting from under-diversification. Using data on private Mediterranean firms and...

Owners of private companies often invest a substantial share of their net worth in one company, which exposes them to idiosyncratic risk. For US companies we investigate whether owners require compensation for lack of diversification in the form of higher returns to equity. Exposure to...

Cognitive biases lead entrepreneurs to overinvest in their own companies, over exposing themselves to idiosyncratic risk. Our novel theoretical model explains entrepreneurial under-diversification by measuring the amount of potential bias in entrepreneurs' portfolio allocations brought about by...