This study sets up a compound option approach for evaluating pharmaceutical R&D investment projects in the presence of technical and economic uncertainties. Technical uncertainty is modeled as a Poisson jump that allows for failure and thus abandonment of the drug development. Economic uncertainty is modeled as a standard di¤usion process which incorporates both up-and downward shocks. Practica...

We address two puzzles of the IPO literature: (1) Why do investment banks earn positive profits in a competitive market? And (2) Why do banks receive lower gross spreads in VC backed IPOs? We model the IPO procedure as a two-stage signaling game. In the second stage banks set offer prices given their private information and the level of the spread. Issuers anticipate the bank’s pricing decision...

Both theory and economic intuition suggest that newly listed firms differ from seasoned ones as potential takeover targets. We identify significant differences between the two groups of firms in this regard: (i) IPOs are more likely to be acquired than are seasoned firms, (ii) IPO targets receive higher acquisition premiums, and (iii) IPO targets are associated with greater synergy. These obser...

In recent years, the economics of migration literature has shown a substantial growth in papers exploring host country impacts beyond the labour market. Specifically, researchers have begun to shift their attention from labour market and fiscal changes, towards exploring what we might call ‘the wider effects of migration’ on the production and consumption sides of the economy – and the role of ...

We analyze the risk, return and cash flow characteristics of infrastructure investments by using a unique dataset of deals done by private-equity-like investment funds. We show that infrastructure deals have a performance that is higher than that of non-infrastructure deals, despite lower default frequencies. However, we do not find that infrastructure deals offer more stable cash flows. Our pa...

This paper presents an empirical examination of which start-up signals will small investors to commit financial resources in an equity crowdfunding context. We examine the impact of firms’ financial roadmaps (e.g., preplanned exit strategies such as IPOs or acquisitions), external certification (awards, government grants and patents), internal governance (such as board structure), and risk fact...

This paper uses unique NYSE audit trail data to evaluate spreads and information content for different order types. Actual spreads are positive for liquidity-demanding orders and negative for liquidity-supplying orders after controlling for order direction. However, because a large fraction of liquidity-demanding orders get price improvement, the actual spread for liquidity-demanding orders is ...

Field Editor: N. Coviello Contributing to the literature on local bias and financial networks, we examine how direct and indirect network ties of financial intermediaries mitigate the effects of distance and preference for local investments. In our analysis of cross-border venture capital exits, we find that proximity within networks facilitates cross-border transactions, which suggests that ne...

This paper shows that active investors, such as venture capitalists, can affect the speed at which new ventures grow. In the absence of product market competition, new ventures financed by active investors grow faster initially, though in the long run those financed by passive investors are able to catch up. By contrast, in a competitive product market, new ventures financed by active investors...

We use the venture capital market to examine two phenomena: “grandstanding” by relatively inexperienced venture capital firms and the effect of proximity on soft information production. We show that these phenomena are closely related. Inexperienced VC firms—those with the strongest incentives to grandstand— tend to match with young and small companies within close proximity, presumably to enha...