We develop a dynamic model of investment, cash holdings, financing, and risk management policies in which firms face financing frictions and are subject to permanent and temporary cash flow shocks. In this model, target cash holdings depend on the long-term prospects of the firm, implying that...

We challenge the view that short-term debt curbs moral hazard and analytically demonstrate that, in a world with financing frictions and fair debt pricing, short-term debt increases incentives for risk-taking. To do so, we develop a model in which firms are financed with equity and short-term...

We model the joint effects of debt maturity and cash holdings on default risk. When firms have short-term debt outstanding, negative cash flow shocks lead to a drop in liquid reserves and may cause firms to suffer losses when rolling over their debt, due to weaker fundamentals. This mechanism...

We model the financing, cash holdings, and hedging policies of a firm facing financing frictions and subject to permanent and transitory cash flow shocks. We show that permanent and transitory shocks generate distinct, sometimes opposite, effects on corporate policies and use the model to...

Theory has recently shown that corporate policies should depend on firms' exposure to short- and long-lived cash flow shocks and the correlation between these shocks. We provide granular estimates of these parameters for Compustat firms using a new filter that uses only cash flow data and the...

Banks face two different kinds of moral hazard problems: asset substitution by shareholders (e.g., making risky, negative net present value loans) and managerial rent seeking (e.g., investing in inefficient “pet” projects and consuming perquisites that yield private benefits). The privately...

We present an integrated theory of capital structure and dividend policy in which both financial policy choices are driven by the same underlying factors and jointly determined as implicit governance mechanisms to allocate control over real (project choice) decisions between managers and...

We study the effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) on repurchases, leverage and investment. The TCJA generates tax windfalls through a repatriation tax cut and a corporate income tax cut. Using monthly repurchase data from SEC filings, we find the surge of repurchases after the TCJA...

We consider a model in which the threat of bank liquidations by creditors as well as equity-based compensation incentives both discipline bankers, but with different consequences. Greater use of equity leads to lower ex ante bank liquidity, whereas greater use of debt leads to a higher...

We develop a theory of optimal bank leverage in which the benefit of debt in inducing loan monitoring is balanced against the benefit of equity in attenuating risk-shifting. However, faced with socially-costly correlated bank failures, regulators bail out creditors. Anticipation of this...