We examine new firms created in 2004 and track their business status in the following four years using the Kauffman Firm Survey data. For firms that exited the sample during the 2004-2008 period, we distinguish between voluntary firm closure in the form of merger or acquisition and compulsory...

In this paper, we examine the differences in information asymmetry and financing patterns and a generalized version of the trade-off theory across countries with different institutional environments. We find that firms in Civil law countries have higher information asymmetry, rely more on...

Most of the previous studies on the firms' debt-equity choice utilize the standard single equation Probit (or logit) model as if firms face a single dichotomous decision to issue debt or equity, but not both. In this study, we examine the factors affecting the choice between internal and...

In a seminal article, Samuelson (1965) [Samuelson, P. A. (1965), “Proof that properly anticipated prices fluctuate randomly,” Industrial Management Review 6, 41–49.] proposes the maturity effect that the volatility of futures prices should increase as futures contract approaches maturity....

Previous studies that test the tradeoff theory commonly use one of the following debt ratio measures to proxy for a firm's hypothesized optimal ratio: firm's time-series mean leverage, moving average leverage based on a firm's historical debt ratios, industry median leverage, and predicted...

We examine the role of venture capital backing on informational externalities generated by IPO firms. Theoretical models predict that going public firms generate positive externalities creating a spillover effect for other firms to go public. In this paper, we posit that venture backed IPOs...

The main purpose of this study is to examine the validity of putting the pecking order and trade-off theories of capital structure in a horse race. Our empirical models, which allow the financing coefficient and the rate of adjustment to vary with the firms' characteristics, provide evidence...

This paper investigates the question of market efficiency in a sample of thirty-four emerging markets with different legal systems. We use both dollar and local currency returns to examine whether exchange rate effects can improve our understanding of the information flows in these capital...

One main goal of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 is to stimulate reinvestment by increasing CRA-regulated lending activity in low-income and minority communities. CRA has been applauded for democratizing credit (Barr, 2005) however, its regulatory shortcomings, namely the need to...

We examine the M&A exit behavior of new, young businesses and the way the exit is shaped by their innovative capabilities and their growth in employment. Using a large sample of startups founded in 2004, we find that businesses organized as corporations had very different acquisition outcomes...