Essays on empirical corporate finance

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on empirical corporate finance. It is submitted to the Department of Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. These three essays explore the field of entrepreneurial finance. The first paper investigates an entrepreneur’s personal influence on her firm. Especially, it examines how entrepreneurial attention affects firm performance. The second and third papers investigate small and medium-sized enter prises (SMEs) financing. In particular, the second paper analyzes how home equity-based borrowing alleviates financial constraints of SMEs in the seed round, while the third paper evaluates the costs and benefits of involving cornerstone investors in an IPO process. I provide a short summary of these three essays in the following.