This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure, taking into account different types of sellers and buyers of control blocks. For a large panel of German corporations we find that firms are more likely to fail or to be sold when performance is poor,...

U.S. venture capital financings of U.S. entrepreneurial firms with up to 213 observations is consistent with the proposition that convertible preferred equity is the optimal form of venture capital finance. This paper introduces new evidence from 208 U.S. venture capital financings of Canadian...

This paper introduces a dataset on forms of finance used in 12,363 Canadian and US venture capital and private equity financings of Canadian entrepreneurial firms from 1991 to 2003. The data comprise different types of venture capital institutions, including corporate, limited partnership,...

Voluntary liquidations offer an interesting example of efficient and orderly asset reallocation. This study examines why firms liquidate, and what happens to their assets. One important determinant of voluntary liquidation concerns asset performance and marketability: liquidating firms have low...

This survey paper examines existing theories of capital structure and related empirical tests with the aim to derive theoretical as well empirically testable predictions about the implications of the soft budget constraint for corporate capital structure. We show that the soft budget constraint...

US public companies recently filed, for the second or third time, management and auditor reports on internal control as required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (404 reports). This Special Comment summarizes our experience and findings on the credit implications of these reports

In this paper we argue that information asymmetry between firm insiders and outside equity investors generates conservatism in financial statements. Conservatism reduces the manager's incentives and ability to manipulate accounting numbers and so reduces information asymmetry and the deadweight...

The role of venture capitalists to distress and bankruptcy in their publicly traded portfolio firms between 1990-2004 is the focus of this paper. A LOGIT analysis on the full sample of 180 VC-backed firms that declared bankruptcy and 180 VC-backed and non-bankrupt healthy matching firms examines...

Prior research has argued that convertible preferred equity is the optimal form of venture capital finance, based on datasets with up to 213 observations from the U.S., where unique tax biases exist in favour of convertible preferred. This paper introduces a comparable sample of 3083 Canadian...

This article studies how financial contracts commit investors to disciplinary actions after poor managerial performance. Two questions are addressed both theoretically and empirically: What disciplinary action should investors choose to motivate their managers? And what is the optimal capital...