We study corporate bond default rates using an extensive new data set spanning the 1866-2008 period. We find that the corporate bond market has repeatedly suffered clustered default events much worse than those experienced during the Great Depression. For example, during the railroad crisis of...

A firm's termination leads to bankruptcy costs. This may create an incentive for outside stakeholders or the firm's debtholders to bail out the firm as bankruptcy looms. Because of this implicit guarantee, firm shareholders have an incentive to increase volatility in order to exploit the...

We use plant output and input prices to decompose the profit margin into four parts: productivity, demand shocks, mark-ups and input costs. We find that each of these market fundamentals are important in explaining plant exit. We then use variation across sectors in tariff changes after the...

The U.S. airline industry went through tremendous turmoil in the early 2000's. There were four major bankruptcies and two major mergers, with all legacy carriers reporting a large profit reduction. This paper presents a structural model of the airline industry, and estimates the impact of demand...

This paper investigates the role that the entry and exit of heterogeneous firms plays in shaping aggregate fluctuations in economic activity. In so doing, it develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which procyclical entry and countercyclical exit along a real business cycle...