Despite the central role played by human capital in entrepreneurship, little is known about how employees in entrepreneurial firms are compensated and incentivized. We address this gap in the literature by studying 18,935 non-CEO compensation contracts across 1,809 privately-held venture-backed...

PIPEs are an important source of financing for many companies, yet controversial due to their harsh contractual structures. We present a detailed study of how PIPE contracts allocate contingent cash flow rights between investor and issuer. We find that issuers advised by high-ranking...

This paper presents novel evidence that a geographically based style matters for the design of financial contracts, in addition to more traditional ingredients. We analyze cash flow contingencies included in 1,804 private equity contracts between U.S. venture capitalists (VCs) and U.S. startup...

The SEC launched in 2002 enforcement actions against investors involved in PIPE (Private Investments in Public Equity) transactions. We describe the legal ramifications of this enforcement initiative, and document dramatic contemporaneous market-wide changes in the contractual structure of...

Real-world financial contracts vary greatly in the combinations of cash flow contingency terms and control rights used. Extant theoretical work explains such variation by arguing that each investor finely tailors contracts to mitigate investment-specific incentive problems. We provide...

We show that the degree of control exerted by investors over entrepreneurial firms helps explain the design of employee compensation contracts, and in ways that are asymmetric for founders versus hired-on employees. Across 1,809 U.S. venture-backed companies, we find that firms with more VC/less...

This paper shows that geographical elements can form an essential component of contract design in addition to more traditional ingredients such as information problems, moral hazard and legal institutions. We analyze cash flow contingencies included in 1,804 contracts between U.S. venture...