We characterize optimal IPO design in the distinct adverse selection problems: one affecting the IPO stage and one arising in the after-market. Allocating shares to an investor with superior information in the after-market depresses the share's value to less informed investors. However, because...

Over the past two decades, private equity has contributed to a shrinking of the U.S. stock market. We develop a political economy model of private equity activity to study the wider economic consequences of this trend. We show that private and social incentives to delist firms from the stock...

This paper analyzes a comprehensive data set of 160 non venture-backed, 79 venture-backed and 61 bridge financed companies going public at Germany´s Neuer Markt between March 1997 and March 2002. I examine whether these three types of issues differ with regard to issuer characteristics, balance...

Especially structured finance instruments were blamed as main reason for the financial crisis 2007, but the understanding for the motivation to originate securitization products is less discovered. Therefor this paper tries to identify main balance sheet characteristics of structured finance...

Between 1999 and 2007, WR Hambrecht has completed 19 IPOs in the U.S. using an auction mechanism. We analyze investor behavior and mechanism performance in these auctioned IPOs using detailed bidding data. The existence of some bids posted at high prices suggests that some investors (mostly...

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 investigate the decisions of listed firms to go private once again. We start by revealing that while a significant number of firms which go public is VC-backed, an overproportional share of these VC-backed firms go private later on (they stay on the exchange for an average of 8.5 years). We...

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 analyze a publicly-traded firm's decision to stay public or go private when managerial autonomy from shareholder intervention affects the supply of productive inputs by management. We show that both the advantage and the disadvantage of public ownership relative to private ownership lie in...