type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We show that peer firms play an important role in determining corporate capital structures and financial policies. In large part, firms' financing decisions are responses to the financing decisions and, to a lesser extent, the characteristics of peer firms. These peer...</p>

This paper explores the relevance of capital market supply frictions for corporate capital structure decisions. To identify this relationship, I study the effect on firms' financial structures of two changes in bank funding constraints: the 1961 emergence of the market for certificates of...

We empirically examine whether firms engage in a dynamic rebalancing of their capital structures while allowing for costly adjustment. We begin by showing that the presence of adjustment costs has significant implications for corporate financial policy and the interpretation of previous...

We provide evidence that corporate tax status is endogenous to financing decisions, which induces a spurious relation between measures of financial policy and many commonly used tax proxies. Using a forward-looking estimate of "before-financing" corporate marginal tax rates, we document a...

For corporations facing tax-function convexity, hedging lowers expected tax liabilities, thereby providing an incentive to hedge. We use simulation methods to investigate convexity induced by tax-code provisions. On average, the tax function is convex (although in approximately 25 percent of...

We study stock holdings and trading behavior of more than 60,000 households and find evidence consistent with dividend clienteles. Retail investor stock holdings indicate a preference for dividend yield that increases with age and decreases with income, consistent with age and tax clienteles,...

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and S&P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, including the effect of options reduces the estimated median marginal tax rate from 31% to 5%. For S&P firms, in...

By the end of January 2001, all NYSE stocks had converted their price quotations from 1/8s and 1/16s to decimals. This study examines the effect of this change in price quotations on ex-dividend day activity. We find that abnormal ex-dividend day returns increase in the 1/16 and decimal pricing...

We analyze several hundred firms that expand via acquisition and/or increase their number of business segments. The combined market reaction to acquisition announcements is positive but acquiring firm excess values decline after the diversifying event. Much of the excess value reduction occurs...

A model is developed which implies that if an analyst has high reputation or low ability, or if there is strong public information that is inconsistent with the analyst's private information, she is likely to herd. Herding is also common when informative private signals are positively correlated...