What determined the corporate use of credit lines in the recent financial crisis? To address this question we hand-collect data on credit lines and interest rate hedging for a random sample of 600 COMPUSTAT firms. We document that drawdowns of credit lines had already increased in 2007, earlier...

A growing number of studies have sought to measure the effects of non-standard policy on bank funding markets. The purpose of this paper is to carry those estimates a step further by looking at the effects of bank funding market stress on the volume of bank lending, using a simultaneous equation...

This paper explores the hypothesis that the rise in intangible capital is a fundamental driver of the secular trend in US corporate cash holdings over the last decades. Using a new measure, we show that intangible capital is the most important firm-level determinant of corporate cash holdings....

Do firms use credit line drawdowns to finance investment? Using a unique dataset of 467 COMPUSTAT firms with credit lines, we study the purpose of drawdowns during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Our data show that credit line drawdowns had already increased in 2007, precisely when disruptions...

This paper studies optimal debt maturity in an economy with repayment enforcement frictions and investors disagree about repayment probabilities. The optimal debt maturity choice is a mix of long- and short-term debt securities. Spreading risky debt claims on cash flows over time allows debt to...

How does going public affect firms’ tax obligations and tax planning? Using a panel of U.S. corporate tax return data from 1994 to 2018, we compare tax payments for firms that completed an IPO with those that filed for an IPO but later withdrew and remained private. We find that in the years...

I study the long-run effects of credit market disruptions on real firm outcomes and how these effects depend on nominal wage rigidity at the firm level. Exploiting variation in firms' refinancing needs during the global financial crisis, I trace out firms' investment and growth trajectories in...

Because they engage in maturity transformation, a steepening of the yield curve should, all else equal, boost bank profitability. We re-examine this conventional wisdom by estimating the reaction of bank intraday stock returns to exogenous fluctuations in interest rates induced by monetary...

This paper investigates the mortgage lending of banks operating in multiple U.S. metropolitan areas during the housing market collapse of 2007-2009. Some metro areas in the U.S. suffered much greater mortgage defaults than others. We use this regional variation to identify whether high mortgage...

This paper proposes an alternative framework to set banks’ operational risk capital, which allows for forward-looking assessments and limits gaming opportunities by relying on an incentive-compatible mechanism. This approach would improve upon the vulnerability to gaming of the AMA and...