Using a sample of 1,018 Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) equity investments in publicly traded firms and a control sample of 5,975 transactions by private-sector financial institutions over 1980-2012, we find that announcement-period abnormal returns of SWF investments are positive, but lower than...

Using a sample of 1,593 US firms that go public between 1990 and 2007, we find that VC-backed IPOs experience less financial distress risk post-offering than do comparable non-VC-backed IPOs. After controlling for endogeneity, we find this is related to the screening done by VC-investors, who...

We survey the literature documenting the rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), which, with assets under management of over $4.5 trillion in early 2014, are a major force in global finance. Research papers have analyzed the evolution of the initial SWFs from stabilization funds to stand-alone...

We explore whether government ownership affects the cost of debt using a sample of fully and partially privatized companies. On average across firms, a one-percentage-point decrease in government ownership is associated with an increase in the credit spread, used as a proxy for the cost of debt,...

This paper summarizes research examining how privatization programs implemented by governments over the past three decades have changed the size and efficiency of global financial markets, altered the practice of corporate finance in economies that experienced large privatizations, and impacted...