This paper exploits inter-temporal variations in employment protection across countries and finds that rigidities in labor markets are an important determinant of firms' capital structure decisions. Over the 1985-2007 period, we find that reforms increasing employment protection are associated...

The importance of skilled labor and the inalienability of human capital expose firms to the risk of losing talent in critical times. Using Swedish micro-data, we document that firms lose workers with the highest cognitive and noncognitive skills as they approach bankruptcy. In a...

Recent decades have witnessed several waves of buyout activity. We find LBOs to be a significant concern for bondholders by showing that a) intra-industry credit spreads increase upon an LBO announcement, b) yields on bonds without event risk covenants are, on average, 21bps higher than those on...

We document that firms decrease their leverage when they convert growth options into tangible assets. We argue that the act of growth option exercise decreases information asymmetry about the firm, which in turn reduces the relative cost of issuing information-sensitive securities such as...

We analyze U.S. banks’ asset exposure to a recent rise in the interest rates with implications for financial stability. The U.S. banking system’s market value of assets is $2.2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value of assets accounting for loan portfolios held to maturity....