This paper introduces a new hand-collected dataset tracking restrictions on shareholder rights at approximately 1,000 firms over 1978-1989. In conjunction with the 1990-2006 IRRC data, we track firms’ shareholder rights over thirty years. Most governance changes occurred during the 1980s. We...

This paper introduces measures of volatility and skewness that are based on individual stock options to explain credit spreads on corporate bonds. Implied volatilities of individual options are shown to contain important information for credit spreads and improve on both implied volatilities of...