"The lack of data on private firms has made it difficult to empirically examine theories of why firms go public. However, both public and private banks must disclose financial information to regulators. We exploit this requirement to explore the goingpublic decision. Our results indicate that...

"This paper examines the impact of mergers on default risk, finding that, on average, a merger increases the default risk of the acquiring firm. This is surprising for two reasons: risk reduction is among the reasons commonly cited for mergers, and asset diversification should reduce default...