Investments in new ventures involve financial contracts between an entrepreneur and outside investors. Investors, such as venture capital firms, represent well-diversified investors. In contrast, the entrepreneur must commit a substantial fraction of human and financial capital to the venture....

We use a database of recent high tech IPOs to estimate opportunity cost of capital for venture capital investors and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs face the risk-return tradeoff of the CAPM as the opportunity cost of holding a portfolio that necessarily is underdiversified. For early stage firms,...

This paper investigates whether sentimental bettors affect the point-spread-formation process in the college football wagering market, as well as whether this market is efficient. Following Avery and Chevalier (1999), this study focuses solely on sources of sentiment that have natural analogues...

Griffin and Tversky (1992) suggest that individuals, when formulating posterior probabilities based on the available evidence, tend to overreact to a new piece of evidence's strength while underreacting to the relative importance of its weight. We test this prediction using the college football...

Tests for market efficiency and rational behavior in financial markets commonly utilize realized return as the variable of interest. Researchers who study point-spread wagering markets for sporting events generally agree that the point spread is these markets' analogue to asset price in...