Firms' inflexibility to adjust their scale persistently explains capital structure variations in a comprehensive sample and randomly-selected sub-samples. Higher inflexibility leads to lower financial leverage, potentially due to higher default risk and lower value of tax shields. Contraction...

This paper documents novel evidence that private debt contains value-relevant nonpublic information with significant economic value. We extract banks' private information from term loan spreads. Abnormal loan spreads significantly predict firms' future operating performance and uncertainty...

This paper documents a new high risk-low return puzzle. Specfically, we find that a forward-looking risk measure extracted from credit line undrawn spreads negatively predicts borrowers' future stock returns. This negative risk-return relation is separate from previously documented asset pricing...

Firms with higher inflexibility to adjust their scale hold more cash than flexible firms due to precautionary considerations. This finding is confirmed in a regression discontinuity design that potentially mitigates endogeneity concerns. Consistent with the precautionary motive, inflexible firms...