Firms have different choices of using equity issuance and cash flow to save. Empirically, we find three differences between savings from equity issuance and cash flow. First, firms may not increase or decrease the savings rates of equity issuance and cash flow at the same time. Second, the...

I show that labor mobility affects the timing of a firm's decision to go public. Employees of private firms compensated with stock options face high separation costs. They have to exercise or forfeit their option grants shortly after termination, which can force them to stay with the firm until...

Using the pay gap between a firm’s CEO and the highest-paid CEO among similar competing firms to conceptualize the prize of winning external promotion tournaments, we document a positive relationship between external tournament incentives (ETIs) and IPO underpricing – a proxy of the cost of...

We propose an “M&A activity” hypothesis as a partial explanation for IPO underpricing. When going public during active corporate control markets, managers may take actions intended to safeguard their control. In support of this conjecture, we find that pre-IPO M&A activity directly explains...

This paper offers a novel framework, combining firm operational risk, IPO pricing risk, and market risk, to model IPO failure risk. By analyzing nearly a thousand variables, we observe that prior IPO failure risk models have suffered from a major missing-variable problem. Evidence reveals...

We explore the forces that drive cash savings in equity issuance using the average cash-savings rate instead of the marginal cash-savings rate that overstates individual issuers’ cash savings. Equity issuers with high investment opportunities save more cash in anticipation of greater cash...

We analyze a regulatory change in the Japanese IPO market that created an abrupt shift from hybrid price-discriminatory auctions to bookbuilding. We find that bookbuilding leads to higher underpricing than hybrid price-discriminatory auctions. Furthermore, we find evidence that price accuracy...

We study the impact of the staggered adoption of anti-collusion leniency legislations around the world on IPO activity. We document that the passage of leniency legislations prompts IPO activity. The effect is amplified in more concentrated industries and in countries with stronger external...

We examine the determinants of and investor responses to corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) bond issuance in Korea. We find that ESG bond issuance is positively associated with firm size and foreign ownership stakes. We also find that firms that establish ESG committees at the...

Legal investor protection is associated with how firms choose to issue shares. The likelihood of private placements relative to rights offerings increases with investor protection, as does the likelihood of public offerings relative to both private placements and rights offerings. These findings...