Do credit market conditions affect corporate capital structures? In an attempt to answer this question, I study two natural experiments that affect corporate access to bank credit: the 1961 expansion of bank credit due to the emergence of the market for CDs, and the contraction associated with...

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...

Unregulated U.S. 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 had...

Using a novel dataset of accounting and market information that spans most publicly traded nonfinancial firms over the last century, we show that U.S. federal government debt issuance significantly affects corporate financial policies and balance sheets through its impact on investors' portfolio...

We document the cross-sectional properties of corporate dividend-smoothing policies and relate them to extant theories. We find that younger, smaller firms, firms with low dividend yields and more volatile earnings and returns, and firms with fewer and more disperse analyst forecasts smooth...

We quantify the empirical relevance of the pecking order hypothesis using a novel empirical model and testing strategy that addresses statistical power concerns with previous tests. While the classificatory ability of the pecking order varies significantly depending on whether one interprets the...

We empirically examine the trade-off theory of capital structure, allowing for costly adjustment. After confirming that financing behavior is consistent with the presence of adjustment costs, we use a dynamic duration model to show that firms behave as though adhering to a dynamic trade-off...

Do credit market conditions affect corporate capital structures? In an attempt to answer this question, I study two natural experiments that affect corporate access to bank credit: the 1961 expansion of bank credit due to the emergence of the market for CDs, and the contraction associated with...

We survey the empirical literature on corporate dividend policy, with emphasis on develop- ments over the last two decades. We divide our review into two parts. We first summarize what we “know” about dividend policy – the set of observations about the nature of (and trends in) dividend...