One way in which corporate financial structure affects macroeconomic performance is by creating debt overhang. Debt overhang occurs when existing debt deters new investment because the benefits from new investment will go to the existing creditors, not to the new investors. If the economy is...

The aggregate dividend payout ratio forecasts excess returns on both stocks and corporate bonds in postwar U.S. data. High dividends forecast high returns. High earnings forecast low returns. The correlation of earnings with business conditions gives them predictive power for returns; they...

We use panel data on prices and net asset values to test whether dramatic country-specific news affects the response of closed-end country fund prices to asset value. In a typical week, prices underreact to changes in fundamentals; the (short-run) elasticity of price with respect to asset value...

We use city-level data to analyze the relationship between homeowner borrowing patterns and house-price dynamics. Our principal finding is that in cities where a greater fraction of homeowners are highly leveraged-- i.e., have high loan-to-value ratios--house prices react more sensitively to...