In these extracts from the world's bestselling graduate textbook, the authors offer a number of suggestions for practitioners, including: - When valuing a company or an investment project, managers should start whenever possible with the asset's market price as the best initial estimate and then...

This paper contrasts the "static tradeoff" and "pecking order" theories of capital structure choice by corporations. In the static tradeoff theory, optimal capital structure is reached when the tax advantage to borrowing is balanced, at the margin, by costs of financial distress. In the pecking...