The creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (“CFPA”) is a very bad idea and should be rejected. The proposal is not salvageable and cannot be improved in substance or in form. The foundational premise of the CFPA is that a failure of consumer protection, and specifically...

This written testimony accompanied Professor J.W. Verret's oral testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services. This testimony argues that executive compensation proposals by the Administration will not address any systemic risk posed by large financial institutions. It also argues...

We examine how political connections impact the process of going public. Specifically, we test how political connections impact the pricing of newly offered shares, the magnitude of underpricing, and the fixed cost of going public. Based on experiences of the new public firms in the Chinese...

This paper investigates the effects of largest-shareholder ownership concentration, foreign ownership, and audit quality on the amount of firm-specific information incorporated into share prices, as measured by stock price synchronicity, of Chinese-listed firms over the 1996-2003 period. We show...

We examine whether Title II of the JOBS Act increases small firms' access to capital. Title II allows firms to sell securities via general solicitations to accredited investors. We find that firms that offer securities via general solicitation tend to be of lower quality. After accounting for...

The European Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on European Crowdfunding Service Providers (ECSPs) for businesses, since its presentation, has faced difficult trilateral negotiations among the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. The length of...

Examining how climate and other environmental regulatory risks affect bond risk and pricing, we find that bond credit ratings and yield spreads appear to be influenced by a firm's environmental performance along with its regulatory conditions. Firms with poor environmental profiles tend to have...

Using a comprehensive and proprietary dataset on international private equity activity, we study the determinants of buyout investments across 61 countries and 19 industries over the period of 1990-2017. We find evidence that macroeconomic conditions, development of stock and credit markets, and...