This paper examines the effects of competing measures of earnings surprises on the value of insurance firms for a sample of 105 Life-Health insurers and 109 Property-Casualty insurers during the 1998-2007 period. Using the surprise portfolio approach, we find that investors in insurance stocks...

We examine new firms created in 2004 and track their business status in the following four years using the Kauffman Firm Survey data. For firms that exited the sample during the 2004-2008 period, we distinguish between voluntary firm closure in the form of merger or acquisition and compulsory...

In this paper, we examine the differences in information asymmetry and financing patterns and a generalized version of the trade-off theory across countries with different institutional environments. We find that firms in Civil law countries have higher information asymmetry, rely more on...

Most of the previous studies on the firms' debt-equity choice utilize the standard single equation Probit (or logit) model as if firms face a single dichotomous decision to issue debt or equity, but not both. In this study, we examine the factors affecting the choice between internal and...

We examine the role of venture capital backing on informational externalities generated by IPO firms. Theoretical models predict that going public firms generate positive externalities creating a spillover effect for other firms to go public. In this paper, we posit that venture backed IPOs...