Mustafa Bulut
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the ) and the at the . I received my PhD in Finance from SSE in May 2024. Prior to my doctoral studies, I worked as a junior economist in the Research Department of the Central Bank of Turkey.
My research lies in empirical corporate finance, with a particular focus on initial public offerings (IPOs), agglomeration, and innovation. I examine how going public affects a firm’s innovative activity, its organizational boundaries, and its role within the local business environment. A central theme in my work is that IPOs generate important local spillover effects: by reshaping collaboration patterns and reallocating talent, they influence not only the IPO firm but also the innovative performance of nearby firms.
I will be on the 2025–2026 job market.
Job market paper title:
Abstract: I study how initial public offerings (IPOs) affect innovative activity in the local areas around IPO firms. To isolate causal effects, I compare counties with completed IPOs to those with withdrawn filings and instrument for IPO completion using NASDAQ returns during the book-building period. I find that local innovation increases significantly after a firm goes public in a county: IPO completion raises local patenting by roughly 9% in OLS and nearly 50% in the IV specification. Spillover effects are stronger for firms operating in technologies similar to the IPO firms, in counties where the IPO firms account for a larger share of the local economy, and within smaller geographic areas. Local innovation in IPO counties increases mainly through existing firms becoming more innovative and attracting new inventors to the area.