We document that net equity issuance is considerably more sensitive to aggregate stock returns and Q's than to firm-level stock returns and Q's. Very similar patterns also emerge when we look at merger activity. In light of earlier work (Campbell 1991, Vuolteenaho 2002) which finds that...

The IRR (dollar-weighted return) reflects the periodic addition or withdrawal of funds by investors, and the difference between IRR and geometric mean is widely used to indicate the impact that the timing of these flows has had on investor returns. This is a biased measure, since it is also...