Commercial real estate makes up a relatively small percentage of most institutional portfolios, even though the existing literature has consistently reported attractive risk-return characteristics that would suggest much larger allocations. This discrepancy has been explained by a perceived lack...

In this study, we analyze the firm’s choice of legal form of organization (“LFO”). We find that only about one in three firms begins operations as a proprietorship, while almost as many begin as limited-liability companies and as corporations. Moreover, this distribution is remarkably...

ERES:conference

This study examines the extent to which individual demographic characteristics of owners influence capital structure decisions. Using the Federal Reserve's 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances, we estimate the joint effects of traditional capital structure determinants and manager age, gender,...

In this study, we use firm-level data from the 1993 National Survey of Small Business Finances to test the hypothesis that banking consolidation has reduced the availability of credit to small businesses. We find that banks in markets where mergers have occurred are more likely than other banks...

This study examines the determinants of CEO compensation using data from a nationally representative sample of privately held U.S. corporations. We find that: (i) the pay-size elasticity is much larger for privately held firms than for the publicly traded firms on which previous research has...

Previous research has established (i) that a country’s financial sector influence future economic growth and (ii) that stock market index returns affect future economic growth. We extend and tie together these two strands of the growth literature by analyzing the relationship between banking...

In this study, we examine unsuccessful takeover attempts for new evidence on whether mergers create or destroy value for acquirers and targets. We contribute to the literature in three important areas. First, we contribute to the literature on signaling by investigating whether a takeover...

Since real estate assets are sold infrequently, analyses that use samples of exclusively sold properties to estimate pricing models may be seriously in error. This paper uses data on samples of sold and unsold properties and an appropriate statistical methodology to evaluate the extent of this...