Why don’t VCs eliminate excess demand for follow-on funds by raising fees? We propose a model of learning that leads to informational holdup. Current investors learn about skill whereas outside investors observe only returns. This gives current investors holdup power when the VC raises his next fund: Without their backing, no-one will fund him, as outside investors interpret the lack of backing as a sign of low skill. Holdup power diminishes the VC’s ability to increase fees in line with performance, leading to return persistence. Empirical evidence supports the model. We estimate that up to two-thirds of VC firms lack skill.

We evaluate the effects of three European Central Bank (ECB) policies (the Securities Markets Programme (SMP), the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), and the Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTROs)) on government bond yields. We use a novel Kalman-filter augmented event-study approach and yields on euro-denominated sovereign bonds, dollar-denominated sovereign bonds, corporate bonds, and corporate credit default swap (CDS) rates to understand the channels through which policies reduced sovereign bond yields. On average across Italy, Spain and Portugal, considering both the SMP and the OMT, yields fall considerably. Decomposing this fall, default risk accounts for 37% of the reduction in yields, reduced redenomination risk for 13%, and reduced market segmentation effects for 50%. Stock price increases in distressed and core countries suggest that these policies also had beneficial macro-spillovers.

We evaluate the impact of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) on shareholders by studying the lobbying behavior of investors and corporate insiders in order to affect the final implemented rules under SOX. Investors lobbied overwhelmingly in favor of strict implementation of SOX, while corporate insiders and business groups lobbied against strict implementation. We identify firms most affected by the law as those whose insiders lobbied against strict implementation. Such firms appear to be characterized by agency problems, rather than motivated by concerns over compliance costs. Cumulative stock returns during the five and a half months leading up to SOX passage were approximately 7% higher for corporations whose insiders lobbied against SOX disclosure‐related provisions than for similar non‐lobbying firms, consistent with an expectation that SOX would reduce agency problems. Analysis of returns in the post‐passage implementation period suggests that investors' positive expectations with regards to the effects of these provisions were warranted.

We provide new evidence on the success of long‐run risks in asset pricing by focusing on the risks borne by stockholders . Exploiting microlevel household consumption data, we show that long‐run stockholder consumption risk better captures cross‐sectional variation in average asset returns than aggregate or nonstockholder consumption risk, and implies more plausible risk aversion estimates. We find that risk aversion around 10 can match observed risk premia for the wealthiest stockholders across sets of test assets that include the 25 Fama and French portfolios, the market portfolio, bond portfolios, and the entire cross‐section of stocks.

We develop a principal‐agent model in an entrepreneurial setting and test the model's predictions using unique data on entrepreneurial effort and wealth in privately held firms. Accounting for unobserved firm heterogeneity using instrumental‐variables techniques, we find that entrepreneurial ownership shares increase with outside wealth and decrease with firm risk; effort increases with ownership; and effort increases firm performance. The magnitude of the effects in the cross‐section of firms suggests that agency costs may help explain why entrepreneurs concentrate large fractions of their wealth in firm equity.