Between 2009 and 2014, 75% of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) were announced and issued overnight, compared to 27% between 2000 and 2008. Overnight issuers obtain a higher SEO offer price because they experience more favorable pre-offer returns. Consistent with these favorable returns being due to the avoidance of pre-issue selling pressure, non-overnight issuers experience a 2.5% pre-issue stock-price decline that reverses within 7 days. This post-issue reversal is increasing in SEO offer size and bigger following large pre-issue price declines. In contrast, returns following overnight offerings are less positive and unrelated to SEO offer size or pre-issue returns.

I provide evidence of a new mechanism by which access to public securities mitigates the bank hold-up problem and reduces loan spreads – it increases a borrower's bargaining power vis-à-vis a lender by offering a bank loan substitute. Difference-in-differences results indicate that loan spreads decline following legislation that makes public securities more attractive, but only when public securities represent a credible substitute for the bank loan (i.e., for term loans taken out by credit rated borrowers). Spreads on revolving lines of credit, which are more complementary with public securities, increase.

The JOBS Act allows certain analysts to be more involved in the IPO process, but does not relax restrictions on analyst compensation structure. We find that these analysts initiate coverage that is more optimistically biased, less accurate, and generates smaller stock market reactions. Investors purchasing shares following these initiations lose over 3% of their investment by the firm's subsequent earnings release. By contrast, issuers, analysts, and investment banks appear to benefit from this increased bias, as optimism is more positively associated with proxies for firm visibility and investment banking revenues when analysts are involved in the IPO process.