[On August 12-13, 2005, the department of finance at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, collaborated with the "Review of Financial Studies" to host a conference titled "The Causes and Consequences of Recent Financial Market Bubbles." This article begins with our overview of the themes and findings of the conference, and it ends with the questions that the literature has yet to answer.]

Formal finance involves the costly acquisition of information about distant entrepreneurs, while relationship-based finance allows financiers to fund a narrow circle of close entrepreneurs without acquiring costly information. In developing economies with low capital endowments, relationship-based finance is optimal because only high-quality entrepreneurs receive funding. However, formal finance may emerge in equilibrium, and it has the only effect of shifting rents from entrepreneurs to financiers. In more-developed economies with higher capital endowments, formal finance becomes necessary to prevent funding of low-quality entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, relationship-based financing may persist in equilibrium, and low-quality close entrepreneurs are funded even when there are high-quality distant entrepreneurs.

This paper investigates how a firm’s capital structure choice affects the informational efficiency of its security prices in the secondary markets. We identify two new determinants of a firm’s capital structure policy: the liquidity (adverse selection) premium due to investors’ anticipated losses to informed trading, and operating efficiency improvement due to information revelation from the firm’s security prices. We show that the capital structure decision affects traders’ incentives to acquire information and subsequently, the distribution of informed traders across debt and equity claims. When information is less imperative for improving its operating decisions, a firm issues zero or negative debt (i.e., holding excess cash reserves) in order to reduce socially wasteful information acquisition and the liquidity premium associated with it. When information is crucial for a firm’s operating decisions, the optimal debt level is one that achieves maximum information revelation at the lowest possible liquidity cost. Our model can explain why many firms consistently hold no debt. It also provides new implications for financial system design and for the relationship among leverage, liquidity premium, profitability, and the cost of information acquisition.

On August 12–13, 2005, the department of finance at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, collaborated with the Review of Financial Studies to host a conference titled “The Causes and Consequences of Recent Financial Market Bubbles.” This article begins with our overview of the themes and findings of the conference, and it ends with the questions that the literature has yet to answer.

Information-based theories of financial intermediation focus on delegated monitoring. However, there is little evidence on how markets discipline intermediaries who fail at this function. We exploit the direct link between corporate fraud and monitoring failure and examine how a venture capital (VC) firm׳s reputation is affected when it fails to prevent fraud in its portfolio companies. We find that reputation-damaged VCs interact differently in the future with their limited partners, other VCs, and IPO underwriters because they are perceived as ineffective monitors. In addition, VCs that fail to prevent fraud experience greater difficulty in taking future portfolio companies public.

This paper examines the relation between corporate lobbying and fraud detection. Using data on corporate lobbying expenses between 1998 and 2004, and a sample of large frauds detected during the same period, we find that firms’ lobbying activities make a significant difference in fraud detection: Compared to nonlobbying firms, on average, firms that lobby have a significantly lower hazard rate of being detected for fraud, evade fraud detection 117 days longer, and are 38% less likely to be detected by regulators. In addition, fraudulent firms on average spend 77% more on lobbying than nonfraudulent firms, and they spend 29% more on lobbying during their fraudulent periods than during nonfraudulent periods. The delay in detection leads to a greater distortion in resource allocation during fraudulent periods. It also allows managers to sell more of their shares.

We investigate IPO market efficiency using a sample of equity carve-outs offered during the period of 1985–2005. Unlike IPOs examined in previous studies where trading during the pre-IPO book-building period does not exist and trading on the IPO date is rationed, in equity carve-outs, investors can trade in the non-rationed market for shares of the parent, which holds a significant fraction of the subsidiary. We find that the subsidiary's initial day return is significantly related to its parent's return over the book-building period, but unrelated to its parent's contemporaneous return. Neither the pre-IPO price revision of the subsidiary nor the return to the parent on the initial trading day can be predicted. While the portion of the subsidiary's initial return unpredictable from information available during the book-building period is significantly related to its parent's contemporaneous return, the predictable component of the initial return is not. We interpret these results as evidence consistent with market efficiency.

We show that political contributions are associated with reduced civil and criminal sanctions for fraudulent executives. These managers benefit more from contributions if their firm also gained from the fraud, if they occupy top positions in firms with weak boards, or if they contribute to powerful politicians. Political contributions reduce budgetary resources for government enforcers and lengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case time-to-resolution. They also facilitate penalty transfer from fraudulent managers to the firm, resulting in their entrenchment and long-term destruction of shareholder value. Our findings highlight an agency cost of political contributions and a mechanism undermining the disciplining effect of regulations.

We construct a mortality table for U.S. public companies during 1985–2006. We find that the age-specific mortality rates of firms initially increase, peaking at age three, and then decrease with age, implying that the first 3 years of public life are critical. Financial intermediaries involved around the “public birth” of a firm (e.g., venture capitalists (VCs) and high-quality underwriters) are associated with lower firm mortality rates, sometimes for up to 7 years after the initial public offering (IPO). VCs reduce mortality rates more through natal financial care than through selection, whereas high-quality underwriters affect firm mortality more through selection.