This paper investigates how public equity issuance is related to stock market liquidity. Using quarterly data on IPOs and SEOs in 36 countries over the period 1995-2008, we show that equity issuance is significantly and positively related to contemporaneous and lagged innovations in aggregate...

This paper examines the effect of CEO risk appetite on the return volatility of a sample of large, listed financial firms over the period 2000-2008. After controlling for firm specific characteristics, the results give strong evidence that the CEO risk appetite has an important effect on firm...

We survey and interview Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of French firms in 2009 about the impact of the global financial crisis and their firms' financial flexibility levels before and during the crisis. Over two-thirds of CFOs report a strong impact of the crisis and cite liquidity problems,...

We review recent developments in the European venture capital (VC) markets. For decades, most of the Continent has lagged behind the U.S. in attracting and retaining young entrepreneurs. Despite several governmental attempts to provide tax incentives and an appropriate infrastructure that would...

We conduct an empirical inquiry into the effect of the Supreme Court's 2010 Morrison decision, which limited the reach of US securities laws to trades occurring on US markets, on the competitiveness of US markets as a venue for listings by foreign issuers and trading in cross-listed stocks. In...

We exploit the natural institutional variation in Western Europe to examine leverage (and debt maturity) for listed and non-listed companies (NLCs). We find that the legal efficiency measure (Djankov, et al, 2008) is more closely related to the amount of leverage and debt maturity than is the...

We exploit the natural institutional variation in Western Europe to examine leverage (and debt maturity) for listed and non-listed companies (NLCs). We find that the legal efficiency measure (Djankov, et al, 2008) is more closely related to the amount of leverage and debt maturity than is the...

We examine corporate sector vulnerabilities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. First, we identify stylized facts based on corporate financial indicators. Second, we assess vulnerability of individual firms to a sudden stop in financing through a probit model, using a panel of 18...

This paper examines the relation between investor protection and real earnings management. We build on the work of La Porta et al. (2000), who found that countries with different legal systems protect investors differently. Using a sample of more than 13,000 unique firms in over 54 countries,...