Investment-Based Underperformance Following Seasoned Equity Offerings

Adding a return factor based on capital investment into standard, calendar-time factor regressions makes underperformance following seasoned equity offerings largely insignificant and reduces its magnitude by 37-46%. The reason is that issuers invest more than nonissuers matched on size and book-to-market. Moreover, the low-minus-high investment-to-asset factor earns a significant average return of 0.37% per month. Our evidence suggests that the underperformance results from the negative investment-expected return relation, as predicted by Carlson, Fisher, and Giammarino (2005).

A Theory of Merger-Driven IPOs

We propose a model that links a firm's decision to go public with its subsequent takeover strategy. A private bidder does not know a firm's true valuation, which affects its gain from a potential takeover. Consequently, a private bidder pursues a suboptimal restructuring policy. An alternative route is to complete an initial public offering (IPO) first. An IPO reduces valuation uncertainty, leading to a more efficient acquisition strategy, therefore enhancing firm value. We calibrate the model using data on IPOs and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The resulting comparative statics generate several novel qualitative and quantitative predictions, which complement the predictions of other theories linking IPOs and M&As. For example, the time it takes a newly public firm to attempt an acquisition of another firm is expected to increase in the degree of valuation uncertainty prior to the firm's IPO and in the cost of going public, and it is expected to decrease in the valuation surprise realized at the time of the IPO. We find strong empirical support for the model's prediction

Trade credit and supplier competition

This paper examines how competition among suppliers affects their willingness to provide trade credit financing. Trade credit extended by a supplier to a cash constrained retailer allows the latter to increase cash purchases from its other suppliers, leading to a free rider problem. A supplier that represents a smaller share of the retailer's purchases internalizes a smaller part of the benefit from increased spending by the retailer and, as a result, extends less trade credit relative to its sales. In consequence, retailers with dispersed suppliers obtain less trade credit than those whose suppliers are more concentrated. The free rider problem is especially detrimental to a trade creditor when the free-riding suppliers are its product market competitors, leading to a negative relation between product substitutability among suppliers to a given retailer and trade credit that the former provide to the latter. We test the model using both simulated and real data. The estimated relations are consistent with the model's predictions and are statistically and economically significant

Understanding Investor Sentiment: The Case of Soccer

We examine the extent to which the stock market's inefficient responses to resolutions of uncertainty depend on investors’ biased ex ante beliefs regarding the probability distribution of future event outcomes or their ex post irrational reactions to these outcomes. We use a sample of publicly traded European soccer clubs and analyze their returns around important matches. Using a novel proxy for investors’ expectations based on contracts traded on betting exchanges (prediction markets), we find that within our sample, investor sentiment is attributable, in part, to a systematic bias in investors’ ex ante expectations. Investors are overly optimistic about their teams’ prospects ex ante and, on average, end up disappointed ex post, leading to negative postgame abnormal returns. Our evidence may have important implications for firms’ investment decisions and corporate control transactions

The Size of Venture Capital and Private Equity Fund Portfolios

We propose a model that examines the optimal size of venture capital and private equity fund portfolios. The relationship between a VC and entrepreneurs is characterized by double-sided moral hazard, which causes the VC to trade off larger portfolios against lower values of portfolio companies. We analyze the structural relations between the VC's optimal portfolio structure and entrepreneurs' and VC's productivities, their disutilities of effort, the value of a successful project, and the required initial investment in a venture. We also test the model's predictions using a small proprietary dataset collected through a survey targeted to VC and private equity funds worldwide

A Theory of Merger-Driven IPOs

We propose a model that links a firm’s decision to go public with its subsequent takeover strategy. A private bidder does not know a firm’s true valuation, which affects its gain from a potential takeover. Consequently, a private bidder pursues a suboptimal restructuring policy. An alternative route is to complete an initial public offering (IPO) first. An IPO reduces valuation uncertainty, leading to a more efficient acquisition strategy, therefore enhancing firm value. We calibrate the model using data on IPOs and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The resulting comparative statics generate several novel qualitative and quantitative predictions, which complement the predictions of other theories linking IPOs and M&As. For example, the time it takes a newly public firm to attempt an acquisition of another firm is expected to increase in the degree of valuation uncertainty prior to the firm’s IPO and in the cost of going public, and it is expected to decrease in the valuation surprise realized at the time of the IPO. We find strong empirical support for the model’s predictions