An employee's annual earnings fall by 13% the year her firm files for bankruptcy, and the present value of lost earnings from bankruptcy to six years following bankruptcy is 87% of pre-bankruptcy annual earnings. More worker earnings are lost in thin labor markets and among small firms. Ex ante...

This paper reviews empirical capital structure research, concentrating on papers published since 2005. We begin by documenting three dimensions of capital structure variation: cross-firm, cross-industry, and within-firm through time. We summarize how well the traditional trade-off and pecking...

This article is based on the keynote address from the Eastern Finance Association meeting in South Beach in April 2010. In this keynote address, I discuss how to engage and motivate students by using the results from surveys of corporate finance professionals. Specific examples are given to...

We administer psychometric tests to senior executives to obtain evidence on their underlying psychological traits and attitudes. We find U.S. CEOs differ significantly from non-U.S. CEOs in terms of their underlying attitudes. In addition, we find that CEOs are significantly more optimistic and...

We survey and analyze risk management goals, policies, and perceptions of risk managers in businesses and organizations around the world. With more than 1,100 responses and a global scope, we ask specific questions about risk management behavior in six risk areas: interest rate, foreign...

Unregulated US corporations dramatically increased their debt usage over the past century. Aggregate leverage — low and stable before 1945 — more than tripled between 1945 and 1970 from 11% to 35%, eventually reaching 47% by the early 1990s. The median firm in 1946 had no debt, but by 1970...

We use a unique dataset of more than 1,000 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers around the world to investigate the degree to which executives delegate financial decisions and the circumstances that drive variation in delegation. Delegation does not appear to be...

This teaching guide is based on a comprehensive survey as well as in-depth interviews of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs). We ask the CFOs about the definition and drivers of earnings quality, with a special emphasis on the prevalence and detection of earnings misrepresentation. CFOs believe that...

This paper uses a unique dataset to study how firms managed liquidity during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Our analysis provides new insights on interactions between internal liquidity, external funds, and real corporate decisions, such as investment and employment. We first describe how...

We survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to performance measurements and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for an external...