This article 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...

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

This paper quantifies the “human costs of bankruptcy” by estimating employee wage losses induced by the bankruptcy filing of employers using employee-employer matched data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s LEHD program. We find that employee wages begin to deteriorate one year prior to...

We study a period of severe disequilibrium to investigate whether board characteristics are related to corporate investment, debt usage, and firm value. During the 1930-1938 Depression era, when the corporate sector was shocked by an unprecedented downturn, we document a relation between board...

We use a unique data set that contains information on more than 1,000 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) around the world to investigate the degree to which executives delegate financial decisions and the circumstances that drive variation in delegation....