We study how political uncertainty preceding U.S. gubernatorial elections affects the market for private offerings. Private offerings raise about 17 percent less capital during the months leading up to an election. This reduction is concentrated in weaker economic periods, and when interest...

We examine whether the reinvestment choices of public pension funds affect the governance of venture capital funds. We start with a hand-collected dataset of litigation against venture capitalists (VCs) that provides significant shocks to the reputation of VCs. We combine that information with...

We examine the effects on IPO uncertainty of an alternative going-public mechanism - the two-stage IPO, where a firm first gets quoted on the OTC market, and then upgrades to a national exchange where it first issues public equity. We find that a two-stage IPO firm experiences lower underpricing...

We examine the impact of information flows on financing and the relative roles of hard information, soft information, and certification of issuer quality by third parties, using novel evidence from the US securities-based crowdfunding market. While hard information about the issuer's financial...

Using a large sample of U.S. small businesses and a new measure of optimism, we examine the role of entrepreneurial optimism in small business lending. We provide evidence that optimistic entrepreneurs are not rationed by lenders. Quite the opposite, our results suggest that they often have...

Venture capital contracts give VCs enormous power over entrepreneurs and early equity investors of portfolio companies. A large literature examines how these contractual terms protect VCs against misbehavior by entrepreneurs. But what constrains misbehavior by VCs? We provide the first...

We examine the response of different types of Limited Partners (LPs) to alleged opportunistic behavior on the part of Venture Capitalists (VCs). We use a sample of litigated VCs (identified by Atanasov, et al, 2012, Journal of Finance) to proxy for VC opportunistic behavior. Based on their...