We develop a model in which a startup firm issues tokens to finance a digital platform, which creates agency conflicts between platform developers and outsiders. We show that token financing is generally preferred to equity financing, unless the platform expects strong cash flows or faces severe...

How do private equity (PE) investors affect firms' borrowing constraints, debt structure, and leverage dynamics? In this paper, we examine this central question by analyzing a large and novel database of PE-backed, bank-reliant, small and middle market firms in the U.S. using administrative...

Private equity funds intermediate investment and affect portfolio firm performance by actively engaging in operational, governance, and financial engineering. We study this type of intermediation in a dynamic agency model in which an active intermediary raises funds from outside investors and...

This paper shows how the rise of private equity has fueled non-bank participation in the U.S. syndicated loan market. Combining administrative data from the Shared National Credit register with buyout deals from Pitchbook, we find that PE-backed loans are associated with lower active bank...

The authors introduce recent research in economics and business-related fields utilizing data from unconventional sources or of unstructured nature. Highlighting unifying themes of such big data and the methodologies for analyzing them at scale, this chapter elaborates the applications of (i)...

After initial investments, relationship financiers typically observe interim information about projects before continuing financing them. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs produce information endogenously and issue securities to incumbent insider and competitive outsider investors. In such persuasion...

Economic activities such as crowdfunding often involve sequential interactions, observational learning, and project implementation contingent on achieving certain thresholds of support. We incorporate endogenous all-or-nothing thresholds in a classic model of information cascade. We find that...

After initial investments, relationship financiers typically observe interim information about projects before continuing financing them. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs produce information endogenously and issue securities to incumbent insider and competitive outsider investors. In such persuasion...