This thesis examines how industry differences affect both corporate financial policies and valuation. Chapter 1 studies the impact of a firm‟s product market power, through the channel of business risk, on its dividend policy. Using three measures of market power – the Herfindahl-Hirschman...

This thesis studies information in financial markets from three perspectives: the role of information asymmetry in alleviating dividend payers’ seasoned equity offering (SEO) announcement returns, the leading behavior of equity analysts who collect and process information, and the pricing of...

We find that firms that regularly access public debt (bond) markets are more likely to pay a dividend and subsequently follow a dividend smoothing policy than firms that rely exclusively on private (bank) debt. In particular, firms with bond ratings follow a traditional Lintner (1956) style...