We argue that firms' balance sheets were instrumental in the propagation of shocks during the Great Recession. Using establishment-level data, we show that firms that tightened their debt capacity in the run-up to the Great Recession (“highleverage firms”) exhibit a significantly larger...

We analyze a model of optimal capital structure and liquidity choice based on a dynamic tradeoff theory for financially constrained firms. In addition to the classical tradeoff between the expected tax advantages of debt and bankruptcy costs, we introduce a cost of external financing for the...

I develop a dynamic model of leverage with tax deductible interest and an endogenous cost of default. The interest rate includes a premium to compensate lenders for expected losses in default. A borrowing constraint is generated by lenders' unwillingness to lend an amount that would trigger...

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and Samp;P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, the median marginal tax rate is 31 percent when option deductions are ignored but falls to 5 percent when one...

Using the firm-level data set, the paper attempts to examine the dynamic patterns in the allocation of credit across firms in recent Korea. In particular, the paper examines the dynamic patterns in the allocation of credit across large and small firms before and after the crisis. The data...

The study is divided into four broad parts, beginning with an exploratory analysis of the data on expost returns on corporate equities and bonds for the 1926-80 period. In Part 2, we estimate the relationships between one-month expost returns on corporate bonds and equities andvariations in...

There are situations in which dispersed creditors (e.g., public creditors) have more difficulties and higher costs when collecting their claims in financial distress than concentrated creditors (e.g., banks). Under this assumption, our model predicts that measures of debt concentration relate...

The U.S. corporate tax distorts the behavior of both real and financial decisions. With respect to the former, the variation in depreciation allowances and investment tax credit provisions across types of investments leads to widely vazying effective tax rates, especially since 1981. Financial...

The history of the financing of the American corporation can be described along many dimensions. One dimension of that history that underlies various measures of historical change in corporate finance is the range of feasible relationships between corporations and intermediaries. Intermediaries...

We use firm-level data to identify financial frictions in China and explore the extent to which they can explain firms' saving and capital misallocation. We first document the features of the data in terms of firm dynamics and debt financing. State-owned firms have higher leverage and pay much...