One of the most conspicuous features of mergers is that they come in waves that are correlated with increases in share prices and price/earnings ratios. We use a natural way to discriminate between pure stock market influences on firm decisions and other influences by examining merger patterns...

Based on German data between 1999 and 2007, we analyze the growth factors of SMEs and contrast them with those of large _rms. Differences show up both in balance sheet and employment growth. While we confirm earlier results on inherent growth structures and the influence of firm age, we derive...

The objective of this study is to determine whether specific industries across countries or within countries are more likely to reach a stage of profitability and make a successful exit. In particular, we assess whether firms in certain industries are more prone to exit via IPO, be acquired, or...

This article investigates empirically whether and to what extent initial capital constraints hinder entrepreneurial performance once the venture has been started. Prior empirical research in this area could investigate this issue only indirectly by lack of data. The key contribution of this...

This paper analyzes the impact of blockownership dispersion on firm value. Blockholdings by multiple blockholders is a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. market. It is not clear, however, whether dispersion among blockholder is preferable to having a more concentrated ownership structure. To test...

This paper examines the potential benefits of security fungibility by conducting the first comprehensive analysis of Global bonds. Unlike other debt securities, Global bonds’ fungibility allows them to be placed simultaneously in bond markets around the world; they trade, clear and settle...

This paper investigates the impact of ownership structure on the productivity performance of Russian industrial enterprises. The analysis compares the effects of several types of new private owners - insiders (managers and other employees) and outsiders (individual and institutional investors) -...

Is real investment fully determined by fundamentals or is it sometimes affected by stock market misvaluation? We introduce three new tests that: measure the reaction of investment to sales shocks for firms that may be overvalued; use Fama-MacBeth regressions to determine whether overinvestment...

Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the empirical importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers issued by a major South...

In this paper we describe a theoretical model of optimal investment of various types of financially constrained firms. We show that the resulting relationship between internal funds and investment is non-monotonic. In particular, the magnitude of the cash flow sensitivity of the investment is...