This paper investigates how public equity issuance is related to stock market liquidity. Using quarterly data on IPOs and SEOs in 36 countries over the period 1995-2008, we show that equity issuance is significantly and positively related to contemporaneous and lagged innovations in aggregate...

Lifecycle theories of mergers and diversification predict that firms make acquisitions and diversify when their internal growth opportunities become exhausted. Free cash flow theories make similar predictions. In contrast to these theories, we find that the acquisition rate of firms (defined as...

Theories of corporate finance predict that young firms make acquisitions to exploit growth opportunities, while mature firms do so because they lack growth opportunities. Further, mature firms are more likely to make wealth-destroying diversifying acquisitions because of agency problems....

During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic change in IPO activity around the world. Though vibrant IPO activity, attributed to better institutions and governance, used to be a strength of the U.S., it no longer is. IPO activity in the U.S. has fallen compared to the rest of the world...

During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic change in IPO activity around the world. Though vibrant IPO activity, attributed to better institutions and governance, used to be a strength of the U.S., it no longer is. IPO activity in the U.S. has fallen compared to the rest of the world...