The post-Global Financial Crisis period shows a surge in corporate leverage in emerging markets and a number of countries with deteriorated corporate financial fragility indicators (Altman's Z-score). Firm size plays a critical role in the relationship between leverage, firm fragility and...

When a nation can finance its investments via foreign-currency denominated debt or domestic-currency claims, what is the optimal capital structure of the nation? Building on the functions of fiat money as both medium of exchange, and store of value like corporate equity, our model connects...

This paper studies the effects of financial constraints on firm growth by investigating if large depreciations differentially impact multinational affiliates and local firms in emerging markets. U.S. multinational affiliates increase sales, assets and investment significantly more than local...

We quantify the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on firm leverage. When home currency appreciates, firms who hold foreign currency debt and local currency assets observe higher net worth as appreciation lowers the value of their foreign currency debt. These firms can borrow more as a result...

This paper documents a set of new stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility for emerging market firms following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate financial roots provide a...

We use micro data from Orbis on firm level balance sheets and income statements to document that accounting returns for privately held businesses are dispersed, persistent, and negatively correlated with firm equity. We also show that firms experience large, fat-tailed, and partly transitory...

The financial behavior of corporations has changed greatly in the last ten years. Previously most of the cash that stockholders received from corporations took the form of dividends, and economists' models that have dividends as the ultimate determinant of equity values were not far off the...

This paper considers a firm that must issue common stock to raise cash to undertake a valuable investment opportunity. Management is assumed to know more about the firm's value than potential investors. Investors interpret the firm's actions rationally. An equilibrium model of the issue-invest...

The cost of capital plays an important role in the allocation of resources among competing uses in a decentralized market system. The purpose of this paper is to organize and present what is known and what is hypothesized about the effects of taxation on the incentive to invest, via the cost of...

Trends in the financing of the corporate sector have been widely discussed in both business and academic circles. It is frequently argued, for example, that corporations' use of debt financing has increased dramatically in recent years. These discussions have been hampered, however, by the lack...