This study investigates whether, and to what extent, dividend-paying firms follow pecking order behavior when altering their capital structure. Using a panel of 3173 U.S. firms from 1960 to 2020 (49,424 firm-year observations), we examine four financing activities: equity and debt issuance under...

Textbook theory assumes that firm managers maximize the net present value of future cash flows. But when you ask them, the people running large public corporations say that they are maximizing something else entirely: earnings per share (EPS). Perhaps this is a mistake. No matter. We take...