Different levels of corporate leverage are used in this paper to help explain the wide range of post-crisis output adjustment across East Asia. In the model developed here, highly leveraged firms facing a cutoff of capital inflows are threatened by bankruptcy. These firms respond by eliminating...

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...

In this paper, we investigate whether a firm's composition of foreign liabilities matters for their resilience during economic turmoil and examine which characteristics determine a firm's foreign capital structure. Using firm-level data, we corroborate previous findings from the (international)...

Public and private sector balance sheets are an important component to any analysis of debt sustainability. A vulnerable and indebted private sector can become a sudden liability for the government; alternatively, resilient household and bank balance sheets may reveal potential sources of...

We explore empirically how the time-varying allocation of credit across firms with heterogeneous credit quality matters for financial stability outcomes. Using firm-level data for 55 countries over 1991-2016, we show that the riskiness of credit allocation, captured by Greenwood and Hanson...

This paper analyzes how the leverage of financial institutions affects their demand for assets and the resulting value of transactions between financial institutions. The results show a positive relationship between buyer capital and the likelihood of buying assets, and between buyer capital and...

We provide a theoretical foundation for the claim that prolonged periods of easy monetary conditions increase bank risk taking. The net effect of a monetary policy change on bank monitoring (an inverse measure of risk taking) depends on the balance of three forces: interest rate pass-through,...