For the last decade economists have been preoccupied with the decline in bank financing to small businesses and entrepreneurs. This effort has produced a better understanding of the obstacles to external financing. We examine the market and ...Read more
We show that firms with chief executive officers (CEOs) who gain general managerial skills over their lifetime work experience produce more patents. We address the potential endogenous CEO-firm matching bias using firm-CEO fixed-effects and...Read more
I review recent takeover research which advances our understanding of ?who buys who? in the drive for productive efficiency. This research provides detailed information on text-based definitions of product market links between bidders and targets...Read more
This paper examines the relationship between innovation and firms? dependence on
external capital by analyzing the innovation activities of privately-held and publicly-traded firms. We find that public firms in external finance dependent...Read more
The separation of ownership and control has always been central in corporate governance debates. A large body of literature has sought to show that control-enhancing arrangements can deter investors. However, the experience of the last few years...Read more
Even though firms? innovation efforts dwindle in reaction to weaker employment protection legislation (EPL), we show that the value of their investment opportunities actually increases. The reason is that weaker EPL discourages innovation efforts...Read more
This paper challenges the view that foreign investors lead firms to adopt a short-term orientation and forgo long-term investment. Using a comprehensive sample of publicly listed firms in 30 countries over the 2001-2010 period, we find instead...Read more
The public offering of truly new securities involves purchases by investors in sufficient number and in small enough blocks that each purchaser’s shares can reasonably be expected to be freely tradable in a secondary market that did not exist...Read more
The AGM is often considered to play an important role in direct shareholder monitoring of directors and corporate blockholders. However, its practical functioning suffers from large obstacles.
In this research we outline the AGM’s flaws...Read more
‘Crowdfunding’ — raising capital through large numbers of small contributions — is a burgeoning phenomenon, spurred by the internet’s capacity to reduce communication costs. Its still-evolving status is reflected in diversity of contracting...Read more
We conjecture that venture capitalists and their investors often fall prey to what is known as ?collective conservatism.? We investigate this conjecture by analyzing boilerplate provisions in limited partnership agreements. When investors accept...Read more
