We study why capital asset markets in which buyers pay too much, well in excess of the asset’s long-term equilibrium price, could exist. A well-known example is the initial pricing of IPO shares. Two mechanisms that could generate an artificial short-term temporary demand for the asset are...

Using a novel measure of marketing during initial public offering (IPO) roadshows, we find that marketing positively predicts underpricing, price revisions, and post-IPO liquidity, but has little effect on fees. We further show that IPO roadshow duration and marketing intensity have decreased...

We study bank policies to limit lending to companies engaged in mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining, a form of coal extraction that has raised many environmental concerns. Using the staggered introduction of these policies, we document that these policies did not lead to meaningful changes in...

We examine the introduction of fractional trading and its impact on retail security ownership. Fractional trading aims to increase investor access to securities with high prices. Over the initial months of Robinhood’s fractional trading program, the number of unique owners increases...

We evaluate the performance and determinants of IPOs allocated to retail investors through the Robinhood IPO Access program (“RIA IPOs”). The average total allocation is 3% of shares offered. Controlling for a set of well-studied IPO underpricing determinants, the average first-day return of...

We conduct the first analysis of FinTech Retail Access programs for IPO share allocations. Issued largely by consumer-facing companies, these “Retail IPO” stocks underperform contemporaneous IPO stocks by an average of 17 percentage points over the first 9 months, even after adjusting for...