This paper studies the optimal top income tax rate. Top income earners are modeled as managers operating a span-of-control technology as in Rosen (1982). In particular, managerial skills increase managers' productivity through both supervision and indivisible decisions, thus giving rise to a...

<link rid="b6">Bloomfield and Hales (2002)</link> find strong evidence that experimental market subjects are influenced by trends and patterns in a manner supportive of the shifting regimes model of <link rid="b3">Barberis, Shleifer, and Vishny (1998)</link>. We subject the model to further empirical scrutiny using the football wagering...

We examine financing activities of newly public firms for evidence on capital staging in the public equity market. Staging (sequential financing) can increase issuance costs but can limit costs associated with overinvestment. We find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that staging is...

Spreads on new and renegotiated corporate loans are significantly higher when the loan originates (or is renegotiated) in the two years surrounding bankruptcy filings by industry rivals. This industry-specific contagion is particularly severe in the middle of industry bankruptcy waves....

We examine the extent to which investment opportunities and/or mispricing motivate equity issuance and contribute to post-issue stock underperformance. We decompose market-to-book ratios into misvaluation and growth option components and find that issuing firms are both overvalued and have...