Shelf offerings have become the dominant method of issuing seasoned equity over the last decade. We find that the increased institutional ownership of U.S. public firms and in particular shelf issuers is the key determinant in the shift in SEO issue method over time. The increase in...

We use novel U.S. county social capital data from the Social Capital Project and show that acquirers located in a high social capital county experience higher announcement returns. The effect is more pronounced when agency problems in the acquirer are more severe. In addition, we find evidence...

Do firms tailor compensation contracts to fit CEOs' individual behavioral traits, and if so, how? We explore this by focusing on CEOs' early life exposure to 'extreme fatality' disasters. Prior literature shows that this can drive agency conflicts of risk aversion. We hypothesize and show that...

The potential to exit companies through Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) is argued to be critical to the existence of an active venture capital (VC) market. However, this can be difficult to test due to endogeneity concerns. We use the suspension of China’s IPO market as an exogenous shock. We...

We use a comprehensive database of venture-capital-backed companies from China to test whether and how foreign venture capitalists (VCs) can facilitate international initial public offerings of entrepreneurial companies. Foreign VCs increase the likelihood that a portfolio company will list on a...