This paper develops a general framework for analyzing corporate risk management policies. We begin by observing that if external sources of finance are more costly to corporations than internally generated funds, there will typically be a benefit to hedging: hedging adds value to the extent that...

Neoclassical investment models predict that firms should make frequent, small adjustments to their capital stocks. Microeconomic evidence, however, shows just the opposite -- firms make infrequent, large adjustments to their capital stocks. In response, researchers have developed models with...

We confront the one-factor production-based asset pricing model with the evidence on firm-level investment, to uncover that it produces implications for the dynamics of capital that are seriously at odds with the evidence. The data shows that, upon being hit by adverse profitability shocks,...

Do financial markets properly reflect leverage? Unlike Gomes and Schmid (2010) who examine this question with a structural approach (using long-term monthly stock characteristics), my paper examines it with a quasi-experimental approach (using short-term a discrete event). After a firm has...

This paper is a contribution to the small but growing literature that compares the investment and R&D behavior of manufacturing firms in large developed countries that have varying financial and capital market institutions. Specifically, we look at two similar samples of French and United States...

This paper analyzes data on a large sample of research and development (R&D) projects documented in the Defense Department's Independent R&O Data Bank, both to provide some stylized facts about R&O investment at the project level and to test the implications of a control-theoretical model...

We develop and analyze a model of a multi-stage investment project that captures many features of R&D ventures and start-up companies. An important feature these problems share is that the firm learns about the potential profitability of the project throughout its life, but that research and...

In the presence of aggregate demand spillovers, an imperfectly competitive firm's profit is positively related to aggregate income, which in turn rises with profits of all firms in the economy. This pecuniary externality makes a dollar of a firm's profit raise aggregate income by more than a...

This paper studies managerial decisions about investment in long-run projects in the presence of imperfect information (the market knows less about such investments than the firm's managers) and short-term managerial objectives (the managers are concerned about the short-term stock price as well...