Shareholder agreements govern the relations among shareholders in privately held firms, such as joint ventures and venture capital-backed companies. We provide an economic explanation for key clauses in such agreements—namely, put and call options, tag-along and drag-along rights, demand and...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>Can managers influence the liquidity of their firms’ shares? We use plausibly exogenous variation in the supply of public information to show that firms actively shape their information environments by voluntarily disclosing more information than regulations mandate and...</p>

Lower underpricing amongst venture-backed IPOs has been attributed to a certification role for venture capitalists. We argue that differences in underpricing per se are uninformative and possibly misleading when not controlling for differences in entrepreneurs` incentives to control...