This paper examines why non-financial publicly traded firms knowingly issue wealth destroying Rule 144A debt, which is associated with a negative announcement return and a higher yield. We provide a plausible “demand-side” explanation (i.e. last-resort debt financing) for the motivation for...

This paper extends our knowledge of corporate debt maturity structure by examining whether and to what extent overconfident CEOs affect maturity decisions. Consistent with a demand side story, we find that firms with overconfident CEOs tend to adopt a shorter debt maturity structure by using a...

We examine whether and to what extent business shocks explain the puzzling instabilities of corporate leverage. We find that business shocks explain a large portion of the unexplained leverage deviation, cross-sectional leverage position migration, and evaporating leverage similarities in the...