We highlight that the inalienable nature of human capital can crucially determine corporate payouts. Exploiting the staggered rejections of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) across 15 U.S. states as exogenous shocks that potentially increase the mobility of key talents, we find that...

The authors show that the regulation requiring corporate insiders to disclose their trades ex post creates incentives for informed insiders to manipulate the market by sometimes trading against their information. This allows them to increase their trading profits by maintaining their information...

This article studies how collateral affects bond yields. Using a large data set of public bonds, we document that collateralized debt has higher yield than general debt, after controlling for credit rating. Our model of agency problems between managers and claim holders explains this puzzling...

We investigate the impact of bankruptcy codes on firms' capital-structure choices. We develop a theoretical model to identify how firm characteristics may interact with the bankruptcy code in determining optimal capital structures. A novel and sharp empirical implication emerges from this model:...