Derrien [2005. Journal of Finance 60, 487–521] and Ljungqvist et al. [2006. Journal of Business] build upon the work of Miller [1977. Journal of Finance 32, 1151–1168] and claim that issuers and the regular customers of investment bankers benefit from the presence of sentiment investors (noise traders) in the market for an initial public offering (IPO). Thus we argue that investment bankers have an incentive to promote an IPO to induce sentiment investors into the market for it. Consistent with this motivation and these models, we expect that the promotional efforts of investment bankers should influence the compensation of investment bankers, the valuation of an IPO, its initial returns and trading, the wealth gains of insider shareholders, and the likelihood that an issuer switches investment bankers for a subsequent seasoned equity offering. Examining data for a sample of IPOs from 1993 through 2000, we find evidence consistent with these predictions and so with the proposition that an investment banker's ability to market an IPO to sentiment investors is important.

Our study addresses two issues overlooked in prior research: Does a firm's future operating lease obligations influence its current cash holdings? Does this relationship contribute to the temporal increase in corporate cash holdings? We provide evidence that these future obligations significantly influence a firm's cash holdings and contribute to the temporal increase in U.S. corporate cash holdings. Consequently, our findings are consistent with the options offered by operating leases to young growing firms and the effect of these operating lease obligations on the firm's operating leverage.

Prior research suggests that executive option grants that do not quickly vest provide managers with better incentives to pursue long-term, instead of short-term, objectives. Previous research also suggests that the pursuit of long-term objectives could be undermined by the risk of early termination. We conjecture that these arguments jointly suggest that managers are better motivated to pursue innovation when they are given more incentive compensation with longer vesting periods for unexercised options and yet some protection from disruptive takeover threats. Our evidence for a sample of newly public firms is consistent with more innovative firms jointly choosing such a combination.

Brennan and Franks (1997) and Stoughton and Zechner (1998) provide contrasting arguments for why monitoring considerations create incentives for managers to underprice their firms' IPOs (initial public offerings). Like Smart and Zutter (2003) , we examine these arguments using a sample of U.S. IPOs. However, we find evidence that the determinants of initial returns, institutional shareholdings, and post‐IPO likelihood of acquisition are not consistent with these arguments. Thus, we conclude that monitoring considerations are not important determinants of IPO underpricing.

Using several different methodologies, we quantify the statistical robustness of variables used in prior research to explain initial IPO returns. We establish a parsimonious list of robust variables and evaluate their implications for different theories of IPO underpricing and clustering. Further, we illustrate how using such a set of robust explanatory variables leads to several different conclusions than prior research that failed to include these important control variables. Researchers who identify new potential predictors of IPO initial returns should control for the list of robust variables we identify.