The paper aims at empirically investigating the relationship between regulation and the capital structure of the regulated firm, A key aspect of the referred relationship pertains a leverage effect according to which debt could be increased as a response to previous physical capital investment...

We reveal motivations of Chinese firms for issuing Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEO) by examining why firms change the use of SEO proceeds and how they use unspecified SEO proceeds. Using 533 SEOs issued by Chinese firms during 1999-2006, we find that firms do not use unspecified SEO proceeds on...

Advance pricing agreements (APAs) determine transfer prices for intra-firm transactions in advance. This paper interprets these contracts as a means to overcome a hold-up problem that occurs because governments cannot commit to non-excessive future tax rates. In addition, with private...

The corporate finance literature documents that managers tend to overinvest into physical assets. A number of theoretical contributions have aimed to explain this stylized fact, most of them focussing on a fundamental agency problem between shareholders and managers. The present paper shows that...

Existing theories of a firm’s optimal capital structure seem to fail in explaining why many healthy and profitable firms rely heavily on equity financing, even though benefits associated with debt (like tax shields) appear to be high and the bankruptcy risk low. This holds in particular for...

When trading, firms choose between different payment contracts. As shown theoretically in Schmidt-Eisenlohr (forthcoming), this allows firms in international trade to optimally trade-off differences in financing costs and enforcement across countries. This paper provides evidence from a large...

This paper examines the impact of thin capitalization rules that limit the tax deductibility of interest on the capital structure of the foreign affiliates of US multinationals. We construct a new data set on thin capitalization rules in 54 countries for the period 1982-2004. Using confidential...

Trade finance, particularly in the form of short-term letters of credit has received favourable capital treatment new Basel III rules. However, concerns have been expressed over the potential negative “unintended consequences” of the newly created leverage ratio for trade. This paper offers...

In many countries, the legal system or social norms ensure that firms are stakeholder oriented. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of stakeholder-oriented firms that are concerned with employees and suppliers compared to shareholder-oriented firms in a model of imperfect competition....