Successful private equity managers have funds that are often oversubscribed and provide persistent abnormal returns. Why do not successful managers increase fund size or fees? We argue that managers want to attract high-quality entrepreneurs, while entrepreneurs want to match with high-ability managers. However, observing fund performance does not allow entrepreneurs to distinguish a manager’s ability from the quality of firms in the fund’s portfolio. As a consequence, a fund manager may devote unobserved effort to select firms, and keep fund size small to limit the cost of effort, hoping to manipulate entrepreneurs’ beliefs about his ability.

We study the trading behavior of investors in an entire stock market. Using an account level dataset of all trades on the Istanbul Stock Exchange in 2005, we identify investors with similar trading behavior as linked in an empirical investor network (EIN). Consistent with the theory of information networks, we find that central investors earn higher returns and trade earlier than peripheral investors with respect to information events. Overall, our results support the view that information diffusion among the investor population influences trading behavior and returns.

Empirical evidence suggests that investor protection significantly affects ownership concentration and asset prices. We develop a dynamic asset pricing model to address the empirical regularities and uncover some of the underlying mechanisms at play. Our model features a controlling shareholder that endogenously accumulates control over a firm, and diverts a fraction of its output. Better investor protection decreases stock holdings of controlling shareholders, increases stock mean returns, and increases stock return volatilities when ownership concentration is sufficiently high, consistent with the related empirical evidence. The model also predicts that better protection increases interest rates and decreases the controlling shareholder’s leverage. Received August 14, 2017; editorial decision January 15, 2019 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.

We investigate whether access to information prior to an initial public offering (IPO) generates a trading advantage after the IPO. We find that limited partners (LPs) of lead venture capital funds obtain high returns when they invest in newly listed stocks backed by their funds. These returns are not explained by LPs’ differing stock-picking abilities, and they are higher when LPs’ information advantage over the public is higher. LPs are more likely to invest if they have an information advantage, and access to information eliminates the familiarity bias that they display otherwise.

We show that small innovators (i.e., small firms with recent patent grants) earn higher future returns than small non-innovators. However, we find no such innovation premium among large firms. The higher returns are driven by risk, not underreaction to announcements of recent patent grants. We find that being small and innovative interacts with financial constraints to explain the higher returns. These interactions are more important in the presence of greater information asymmetry. The higher cost of equity among small innovators has implications for their investment, growth, and capital structure decisions.