“Noon Sunshine-Young Scholars Seminar” is a regular academic exchange platform held by School of Finance. It aims to offer valuable occasions of communications among scholars in our college, between teachers and students, the domestic and the oversea. In this semester, we keep our original intention, set off for a new voyage. We will devote ourselves to fostering the academic atmosphere in the college, and promoting the academic level for both teachers and students.

The tenth session of “Noon Sunshine-Young Scholars Seminar” for the Spring Semester in 2024 is arranged as follows:

Lecture topic：Life Cycle Founder Ownership

Keynote Speaker: Shi Yu

Commentator: Zhao Yang

Date：Thursday, May 23rd, 2024

Time：12:00-13:00

Lecture Venue：Room 116, School of Finance

Abstract

We construct a new dataset tracking founder ownership through firm life cycle. We find that founder ownership increases for private firms from 1996 to 2018, while decreases for public firms both at and post IPO. We explain this pattern by presenting a model of founders’ optimal allocation between liquid assets and entrepreneurial firms. Founders decrease their ownership in order to consume from liquid assets. In the private market, the illiquidity of entrepreneurial firms leads to an increased marginal consumption rate, and reduces founder ownership. A relaxed illiquidity constraint explains the contradictory founder ownership trends in the private the public market.