This paper examines the division of fees within the IPO underwriting syndicate using data on 4,186 US IPOs in the 1990s. Like the 7% gross spread, the standard contract of 20% management fee, 20% underwriting fee, and 60% selling concession has become more common in recent years. There exists,...

Patterns of clustering in IPO gross spreads can be identified not only in the U.S., but also in many other markets across the world. The evidence indicates, however, that these clustering patterns are not necessarily collusive. Clustering is widespread in many countries with low gross spreads....

Exit rates provide a simple yet practical measure for evaluating and benchmarking the performance of venture capital funds. We create a sample of 138 liquidated U.S. venture capital funds and investigate the outcomes of their 4,549 portfolio companies. We study exit rates, proportions of...

We find that left-wing voters and politicians are less likely to invest in stocks, controlling for income, wealth, education, and other relevant factors. This finding from unique data sets in Finland is robust both at the zip code and at the individual level. A moderate left voter is 17-20% less...

We find that investors tend to hold the same securities as their parents. Instrumental variables that exploit social networks and a natural experiment based on mergers allow us to attribute the security-choice correlation to social influence within families. This influence runs not only from...

This study documents patterns of investor behavior around Finnish rights issues. We find that shareholders of issuing companies lost at least amp;#8364;9.9 million in aggregate from 1995 to 2002 by exercising rights too early, selling rights in the open market below their intrinsic value, or leaving...