In this paper we analyze an entrepreneur /manager's choice between private and public ownership in a setting in which management needs some "elbow room" or autonomy to optimally manage the firm. In public capital markets, the corporate governance regime in place exposes the firm to exogenous...

We analyze an entrepreneur/manager's choice between private and public ownership. The manager needs decision-making autonomy to optimally manage the firm and thus trades off an endogenized control preference against the higher cost of capital accompanying greater managerial autonomy. Investors...

We focus on public-market investor participation to analyze the firm's decision to stay public or go private. The liquidity of public ownership is both a blessing and a curse: It lowers the cost of capital, but also introduces volatility in a firm's shareholder base, exposing management to...

Focusing on economic distress episodes in an industry, we estimate the effect of conglomeration on resource allocation. Distressed segments have higher sales growth, higher cash flow, and higher expenditure on research and development than single-segment firms. This is especially true for...