In this paper, we investigate the damage to real-sector investment spending and corporate financing activities triggered by the failure of three major investment banks during the 2007-09 financial crisis. We find that firms characterized by pre-crisis corporate investment banking relationships...

The financial crisis provides a natural experiment for testing theoretical predictions of the equity underwriter’s role following an initial public offering. Clients of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia saw their stock prices fall almost 5 percent, on average, on the...

We study the role of banking relationships in IPO underwriting. Among other issues, we consider whether banking relationships lead to increased access to public equity markets, especially for smaller, lesserknown firms. When a firm in Japan goes public, it can engage an investment bank that is...

A competing risk hazard model is employed to examine the reasons for Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise (GEM) companies transferring to the Main Board (MB) in the period 2000-2012. In our sample during the period 21 companies or 15% of the original stock moved up to the MB. The modal life expectancy...

We examine the determinants of startups' exits using novel technology measures based on patent text. We propose that innovation in rapidly evolving technology areas substitute existing technologies, creating a path to an independent market presence. Startups innovating in rapidly evolving areas...

This paper studies how institutional characteristics of Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are related to their post-merger survival. SPACs are unique financial firms that conduct the IPO with the solely purpose to use the proceeds to acquire another private company. Paper finds...

Clustering of IPO underwriting spreads at 7% poses two important puzzles: Is the market for U.S. equity underwriting services anti-competitive and why do equity underwriters invest in reputation-building? This study resolves both puzzles. Modeling endogeneity of firm-underwriter choice using a...

We show that a sample of 7,487 U.S. firms going public between 1975 and 2014 significantly underperforms mature firms in the first year after the IPO. Contrary to post-issue horizons of three to five years, the first-year underperformance cannot be explained by Carhart (1997) risk factor...

Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are a special type of public companies currently available to investors in financial markets. As an investment vehicle, modern SPACs are traced back to 18-th century England where blank checks were first mentioned as blind pools during the infamous...

We track firms at birth and compare the growth pattern of IPO firms and their birth-matched counterparts. Firms that are larger at birth with faster initial growth are more likely to attain a larger size later in life and go public. Firms in the top percentile of predicted propensity to go...