This study examines the association between real earnings management, governance attributes, and IPO failure risk. Using a sample of 4174 IPOs firms that went public over the period of 1998-2011, we find evidence that real earnings management and governance attributes are associated with IPO...

Newly public companies tend to exhibit abnormally high accruals in the year of their initial public offering (IPO). Although the prevailing view in the literature is that these accruals are caused by opportunistic misreporting, we show that these accruals do not appear to benefit managers and...

One important effect of the sluggish IPO market is the focus on deregulation and the emergence of a new generation of securities markets. These deregulated markets are considered important to stimulate entrepreneurial activity and attract venture capital. This paper argues that the introduction...

This study examines whether and when credit rating agencies take negative rating actions against issuers committing accounting fraud before the fraud is publicly revealed as well as the economic impacts of such rating actions. We find that Standard & Poor's (S&P), an issuer-paid rating agency,...

The paper offers a new explanation for the widely observed use of redeemable and convertible preferred stock in venture capital finance. Redeemable and convertible preferred stocks can be used to endogenously allocate cash flow and control rights as a function of the state of nature, the...

This paper analyzes innovation races in a moral hazard setting. I develop a model where two competing entrepreneurs, financed by a single venture capitalist, work independently on the same project. The venture capitalist cannot observe the allocation of funds she provides, which creates a moral...

This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and...

The paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide equity finance. They must structure the entrepreneur's profit share and base salary to assure their incentives for full...