We study the impact of the COVID-19 recession on capital structure of publicly listed U.S. firms. Our estimates suggest leverage (Net Debt/Asset) decreased by 5.3 percentage points from the pre-shock mean of 19.6 percent, while debt maturity increased moderately. This de-leveraging effect is...

This paper examines ways to summarize the maturity structure of public debts using a small number of parameters. We compile a novel dataset of all promised future payments for US and UK government debt from every month since 1869, and more recently for Peru, Poland, Egypt, and Nigeria. We show...

Using data on syndicated loan issuances by emerging market firms, we find that an increase in the external debt of emerging market governments significantly raises the borrowing costs of the domestic corporate sector. This finding suggests that a higher level of public external debt ""crowds...

This paper studies the evolution of non-financial corporate debt among publicly listed companies in major advanced economies between 2010 and 2017. Since 2010, firms have started to rely more on corporate bond markets and have used part of their debt to increase their holdings of cash. In our...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This systemic risk like no other at a time of record-breaking debt levels, especially among nonfinancial firms across the world, could exacerbate corporate vulnerabilities, deepen macro-financial...

This paper investigates the role of tax incentives towards debt finance in the buildup of leverage in the nonfinancial corporate (NFC) sector, using a large firm-level dataset. We find that so-called debt bias is a significant driver of leverage, for both small and medium-sized enterprises and...

This paper surveys markets for corporate debt securities in the major industrial countries and the international markets. The discussion includes a comparison of the sizes of the markets for various products, as well as the key operational, institutional, and legal features of primary and...

The paper shows how-in a Merton-type model with bankruptcy-the currency composition of debt changes the risk profile of a company raising a given amount of financing, and thus affects the cost of debt. Foreign currency borrowing is cheaper when the exchange rate is positively correlated with the...

This paper uses a stochastic continuous time model of the firm to study how different corporate governance structures affect the agency cost of debt. In the absence of asymmetric information, it shows that control of the firm by debtholders with a minority stake delays the exit decision and...

Corporate debt in emerging markets has risen significantly in recent years amid accommodative global financial conditions. This paper studies the relationship of leverage growth in emerging market (EM) firms to U.S. monetary conditions, and more broadly, to global financial conditions. We find...