In response to the reduction in trade policy uncertainty following China's accession to the WTO, U.S. manufacturing firms implemented more conservative capital structures, relying less on debt financing and holding more cash. We identify the effects using cross-sectional variation in exposure as...

The American population is aging and changes in the population’s age structure are leading to an aging of the nation’s workforce. In addition, changes to age specific participation rates are exacerbating the aging of the national labor force. An important challenge for firms and...

We investigate the unique role and mechanisms of industry growth in firms’ risk-taking policies. We find that industry growth is negatively associated with corporate risk-taking, consistent with the prospect theory that a high-growth industry gives firms a superior external environment, which...

We use variation in corruption convictions across judicial districts in the United States to examine the relationship between political corruption and risk-taking of public firms. Firms headquartered in regions with high levels of political corruption have lower total risk and lower...

We theoretically examine voting for corporate policies when shareholders or board members face a trade-off between maximizing firm value and implementing social objectives (like minimizing pollution). If voters care about one social objective, we show that voting can successfully aggregate...

Syndicated loans integrate bank monitoring with risk sharing similar to corporate bonds. Consistent with this argument, we find that firms use more loans and fewer bonds, and increase capital expenditures, after initial access to the syndicated loan market. The growth of collateralized loan...

Firms increasingly take stances on polarizing issues but at the same time invest in political activities that may contradict their claims. In this paper, we analyze whether firms’ sociopolitical claims and political activities are aligned. We develop a dictionary of claims related to diversity...

Individuals with an Anglo-Saxon cultural background are customarily considered to be less risk-averse than other individuals. The validity of this assumption appears to be borne out in the world of corporate finance. We investigate the risk-related corporate decisions of the board of directors,...