First, we created a dummy variable D DOCS to indicate if a funding request included documents. To facilitate interpretation and increase parsimony,we aggregated the request characteristics into three mutually exclusive categories. If a business plan or private placement memorandum was included in the request, the variable BUS PLAN took the value one and zero otherwise. If an executive summary was submitted but a business plan or private placement memorandum was not submitted, EXEC SUM took the value one and zero otherwise. Those requests that failed to meet these two conditions made up the third group of funding proposals. Note that proposals in this third group may have included other types of documents