We examine how accounting-based compensation plans influence a firm's contracts with its creditors. After granting long-term accounting-based compensation plans (LTAPs) to CEOs, firms pay lower spreads and have fewer restrictive covenants in new bank loans. Mechanisms leading to lower borrowing...

We study how non-financial multinational companies propagate economic declines from their subsidiaries located in countries experiencing an economic downturn to subsidiaries in countries not experiencing one. We find that investment is 18% lower in subsidiaries of these parents relative to the...

Product price risk is a potentially important factor for firms' liquidity management. A natural place to evaluate the impact of this risk on liquidity management is the electricity industry, since producing firms face substantial price volatility in wholesale markets. Empirically, higher...

The equity term structure is downward sloping at long maturities. I show, through an ICAPM estimation, that the tradeoff between market and reinvestment risk explains this pattern. Intuitively, while long-term dividend claims are highly exposed to market risk, they are also good hedges for...

The investment CAPM provides an economic foundation for Graham and Dodd's (1934) Security Analysis, without mispricing. Expected returns vary cross-sectionally, depending on firms' investment, expected profitability, and expected investment growth. Our economic model also offers an appealing...

We study the effect of a bond's place in its issuer's maturity structure on credit risk. Using a structural model as motivation, we argue that bonds due relatively late in their issuers' maturity structure have greater credit risk than do bonds due relatively early. Empirically, we find robust...

The U.S. equity markets recently increased the tick size from one to five cents for smaller capitalization stocks. We show that the larger tick size raised the cost for retail-sized liquidity demanding orders by almost fifty percent, and raised profits to liquidity providers by forty percent....

Influenced by their compensation plans, CEOs make their own luck through decisions that affect future firm risk. After adopting a relative performance evaluation (RPE) plan, total and idiosyncratic risk are higher, and the correlation between firm and industry performance is lower. The opposite...

U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee considered many important banking reforms in 2009-2010 including the Dodd-Frank Act. We show that during this period, the foreclosure starts on delinquent mortgages were delayed in the districts of committee members even though there was...