This paper estimates the issuers' demand for the banker's underwriting service across different varieties of equity-linked securities.

This paper shows how this becomes an informational first-mover advantage that turns innovators into the market leader.

This paper shows how a financial institution can profit from the development of financial products even if they are unpatentable.

This paper investigates empirically the illiquidity of majority blocks of shares in the context of a search model of block trades. The search model incorporates two aspects of illiquidity, or search frictions. First, upon a liquidity shock, the incumbent blockholders may be forced to sell to a...

This paper studies the impact of cash constraints on equilibrium winning probabilities in a patent race between an incumbent and an entrant. We develop a model where cash-constrained firms finance their R&D expenditures with an investor who cannot verify their effort. In equilibrium, the...

We study the determinants of private benefits of control using data on negotiated block transactions. We estimate structurally the block pricing model in Burkart, Gromb, and Panunzi (JF, 2000), acknowledging the significant presence of both block premia and block discounts in our sample. The...

We study product innovation and imitation in the market of corporate underwriting with a dynamic model where client switching costs and the bankers’ expertise in deal structuring characterize the life cycle of a security. While the clientele loyalty allows positive rent extraction, the...

Investment banks develop new securities permanently even when their competitors can imitate them almost immediately and at significantly smaller development costs. Using data of all the new issues of Equity Linked and Derivative Securities since 1985 compiled by SDC, and firm financial data from...

Investment banks find it profitable to invest in the development of innovative derivative securities even without being able to preclude early competition from other investment banks using patents. To explain this, we assume that the developer can learn from the first issues of the innovative...