We analyze the desinvestment decision of venture capitalists in the course of an IPO of their portfolio firms. The capital market learns of the project quality only in the period following the IPO. Venture capitalists with high-quality firms face a trade-off between immediately selling their...

This article analyses in theoretical terms on the basis of strategic portfolio decisions the pros and cons of an information basis that is stable in the long term versus one that is topical, but more volatile. The effects of an evaluation method depend on the characteristics of the assets...

This paper analyzes the effects of informational asymmetries on screening borrowers. Lenders with access to accurate credit scores offer the most valuable borrowers lower interest rates than lenders with an advantage in costly screening. This cream-skimming induces a negative externality, which...

The admission by the Greek government on October 18, 2009, of large-scale accounting fraud in its national accounts sparked an unprecedented sovereign debt crisis that rapidly spread to the Eurozone’s weakest member states. As the crisis increasingly drove a wedge between a seemingly resilient...

The paper constructs a search-theoretic model of credit markets with a bilateral trading mechanism that enables the manageable introduction of asymmetric information. Borrowers´ success probabilities are unobservable to financiers, but the degree of risk in observable projects can be used as a...

Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) have been measuring the credit risk of debt for slightly over 100 years. The industry is characterised by artificial and natural barriers to entry and an issuer-pays system. The agencies’ ratings performed poorly for structured finance products and have been...

Certifiers contribute to the sound functioning of markets by reducing a symmetric information. They, however, have been heavily criticized during the 2008-09 financial crisis. This paper investigates on which side of the market a monopolistic profit-maximizing certifier offers his service. If...

Financial literacy has become a topical issue in recent years. This paper seeks to summarize the growing efforts of financial literacy field in Zimbabwe, with special reference to banks. Financial literacy should be a concern to the government especially the Central Bank, Commercial Banks, other...

We provide the first study of underwriter-affiliated analysts' pre-IPO research coverage and its impact on stock prices. Using proprietary data on a sample of Chinese IPOs, we document that affiliated analysts make highly overoptimistic forecasts about IPO clients. Analyst hype inflates both the...

We examine the introduction of an asymmetric, randomized speed bump that allows low-latency liquidity providers to avoid order-flow driven adverse selection by reacting to activity on other venues. The speed bump segments order flow and increases profits for fast liquidity providers on that...