We study the leverage of U.S. firms over their life-cycles, and the connection between firm leverage, firm growth, and … leverage dynamics over their life-cycles. Firm age and size are systematically related to leverage for private firms, but not … leverage dynamics of firms is also relevant for aggregate fluctuations …

representatives on corporate boards. If a banking relationship is a substitute for the stock market, then interaction with a bank … monopolistic control over access to external capital markets, then bank interests may conflict with those of other equityholders … structure of the firms' equity. We test for conflicts-of-interest in bank behavior and ask whether the relationship between …

Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since at least the Great Depression … performance of banks during the credit crisis. More specifically, we investigate whether bank performance is related to bank …-level governance, country-level governance, country-level regulation, and bank balance sheet and profitability characteristics before …

financial sector. We show that bank size, purely on strategic grounds, is a key determinant of banks' leverage choices, even … when bailout policies treat large and small banks symmetrically. Large banks always take on more leverage than small banks … banks also choose strictly higher borrowing when large banks are present, since banks' leverage choices are strategic …

activities that require the processing of soft information. We explore this idea in the context of bank lending to small firms … financial records. Moreover, controlling for the endogeneity of bank-firm matching, large banks lend at a greater distance …