We examine how the Jumpstart Our Business Startup Act (JOBS Act) affect mergers and acquisitions. We find that U.S. private targets are valued higher after the JOBS Act relative to public targets acquired by US acquirers. The announcement returns of acquirers who acquired US private targets...

We examine how management stock options affect corporate risk taking. We exploit exogenous variation in stock option grants generated by FAS 123R and use loan spreads to infer risk taking. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the spreads of loans taken by firms that did not...