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...

Peer-to-business lending refers to online platforms facilitating loans from individuals to smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We conjecture that easy-to-understand risk ratings conveyed by the platform play a pronounced role in influencing the borrowing success of SMEs and that more...

The introduction of the 2006 Norwegian shareholder income tax was announced in advance, and it increased top marginal tax rates on individual dividend income from zero to 28 percent. We document strong timing effects on dividend payout on a large panel of non-listed corporations, with a surge of...

We analyze the effect of investor level taxes, firm-specific ownership structure and firm-specific payout policy on firms' capital structure choice. Our analysis is based on data for 10,983 firms from 13 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries over the time period 2002-2012. Our results...

This paper studies how variations in tax rates and profitability affect the (unconditional) quantiles of the distribution of the leverage of European foreign owned subsidiaries in the presence of unobserved company characteristics, possibly correlated with their observable dimensions. To achieve...

We examine how investor-level tax incentives affect financing for start-ups using the introduction of a generous tax deduction for qualified angel and VC investment in China as a quasi-natural experiment. We find that the tax incentive increases funding for eligible start-ups, with stronger...

What role does the selection of an investor and the timing of financing play in initial coin offerings (ICOs)? We investigate the operating and financial performance of ventures conducting ICOs with different types of investors at different points in the ventures' life cycle. We find that,...

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...

The OECD in its BEPS action plan 4 addresses tax base erosion by profit shifting through the use of tax deductible interest payments. Their main concern is interest deductions between outbound and inbound investment by groups. Studies of multinational firms show that the tax sensitivity of debt...

We model a risk-averse firm owner who wants to maximize the intertemporal expected utility of firm’s dividends. The optimal dynamic control problem is characterized by two stochastic state variables: the equity value, and profitability (ROA) of the _rm. According to the empirical evidence, we...