In contrast to bonds, levered loans do not require SEC registration. We show that this distinction plays an important role in firms' choice between funding through loans and bonds and helps understand why the market share of cov-lite loans has increased so much. Compared to cov-heavy loans,...

This paper uses data on actual returns on taxable bonds, tax-exempt bonds, and a small sample of equity mutual funds over the 1962-1998 period to compare two asset location strategies for retirement savers. The first strategy gives priority to holding equities, through equity mutual funds, in a...

During the decade 1983-1992, approximately 1.4 trillion dollars of municipal bonds were sold in 87 thousand separate issues, primarily to finance capital projects for education, electric power, transportation, health care, housing and other public and private purpose activities. Approximately...

The very low real interest rates on bonds in the 1970's were accompanied by a large drop in the value of common stocks relative to dividends and earnings. More generally, a number of authors have demonstrated that the real prices of debt and equity claims do not covary closely, and often move in...