Skewness is pervasive across financial instruments, and the literature has documented that many investors seek idiosyncratic skewness in their portfolios. In response, there are some theoretical models that study implications of the preference for skewness, but using utility functions where the...

We study a firm's debt-maturity policy. The firm, keeping book leverage constant, rolls over expiring debt by newly issuing short- or long-term bonds, which pay different coupons. In equilibrium, we always find two balanced issuance regimes, which are associated with one type of debt: In bad...

We consider an important class of research and development (R&D) investments in public and private entities that require selection from a large number of proposals such that: (1) the potential monetary value of the proposals is not a first-order factor in the selection; and (2) the investments...

Max Pain price is the strike price at which the total payoff of all options (calls and puts) written on a particular stock, and with the same expiration date, is the lowest. We construct a measure of (potential) Max Pain gain/loss, sort stock prices according to this measure, and find that a...