We survey more than 1,000 CEOs and CFOs to understand how capital is allocated, and decision-making authority is delegated, within firms. We find that CEOs are least likely to share or delegate decision-making authority in mergers and acquisitions, relative to delegation of capital structure,...

We use a unique dataset of more than 1,000 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers around the world to investigate the degree to which executives delegate financial decisions and the circumstances that drive variation in delegation. Delegation does not appear to be...

Using a lender cutoff rule that generates plausibly exogenous variation in credit supply, I investigate a new channel through which funding shocks are transmitted to the real economy. Based on a sample of more than 15,000 loan applications from small- and medium-sized enterprises, I find that...

This paper examines the implications of leverage for corporate risk taking in a dynamic N-period model. In each period, there is an identical, standard risk-shifting problem. Leverage creates two inefficiencies. First, we confirm the standard intuition by which high leverage leads firms to take...

In this paper, we analyze the effect of the conversion price of CoCo bonds on equity holders' incentives. First, we use an option-pricing context to show that CoCo bonds can magnify equity holders' incentives to increase the riskiness of assets and decrease incentives to raise new equity in a...