We provide a new framework for identifying timing. Our analysis focuses on the smoothed joint history of the fund with the benchmark. The approach is fully non-parametric. Therefore, it has the advantage of avoiding the misspecification problems so common in this literature. The test statistic...

This paper investigates the dynamics of capital structure of Japanese firms since the early 1990s to shed light on how far the reduction of excess leverage has progressed so far in Japan. Our main findings are as follows. First, the trade-off theory provides an appropriate framework to assess...