We examine a comprehensive set of public firms' issues of private and public debt, convertibles and common equity securities. The market for public firms issuing private securities is large. Of the over 13,000 issues we examine, more than half are in the private market, with 81\% of small public...

We examine public firms' issues of private and public debt, convertibles, and common equity securities. The market for public firms issuing private securities is large. Of the over 13,000 issues we examine, more than half are in the private market. We find that asymmetric information plays a...