This study investigates the motivations for and the wealth effects of 150 fixed price and 110 Dutch auction self-tender offers from the period 1981 to 1994. Like earlier studies, I find significantly positive abnormal returns around the announcements of the self-tender offers. However, unlike...

Using a database of more than 180,000 private companies from 2000 to 2009, we find that the benefits of holding more cash vary substantially with a firm’s size and the conditions it faces. Cash holdings matter most for small firms: when there are negative shocks to industry or macroeconomic...

This study examines the performance of industry consolidating IPOs by using a sample of 58 firms that conducted a roll-up IPO over the 1994-1999 period and 55 build-up IPOs that went public between 1983 and 1999. Results indicate that the long-run stock price performance of roll-up IPOs...

Most working adults have access to a taxable brokerage account (TBA) and a tax deferred retirement account (TDRA). According to the existing literature, taxable bonds should be located in the TDRA, while equities should be located in the TBA due to the tax treatments of these accounts. If...

In the first essay, I test the predictions of the market timing theory of capital structure on a comprehensive sample of firms that issued debt and equity during the period January 1974-December 2001. I first categorize firms as likely and unlikely market timers based on their ability to time...

In Part I we develop a model of entry in which an entrant with private information about its production cost and cost of entry has an opportunity to trade in the stock of a single incumbent before entry. We assume an efficient stock market populated by risk-neutral liquidity sellers who randomly...

In this paper, we provide evidence that trading driven by investors' behavioral biases contributes to stock return momentum. In particular, we focus on two types of irrational trading, momentum trading and confidence-influenced trading, which could be driven by psychological biases introduced by...

We hypothesize that firms structure their asset holdings so as to shelter assets from extraction by politicians and bureaucrats. Specifically, in countries where the threat of political extraction is higher, we hypothesize that firms will hold a lower fraction of their assets in liquid form....

This study investigates empirically the factors that determine whether firms borrow from banks and other finance companies versus issuing bonds for sale to the public. I analyze 1,560 new borrowings from banks, non-bank private lenders, and the public debt market by 1,480 U.S. public firms over...

This dissertation is comprised of two essays in which I investigate the idea that cross-subsidization of poorly-performing units within conglomerates is a cause for the value loss from diversification. In the first essay, I document a significant curvilinear relation between the value of...