We analyze the changes in cash holding policies of S&P 500 firms before and after their inclusion in the index. One year after inclusion, the mean industry-adjusted cash holdings of these firms decline by nearly 32% from the year before inclusion. Several factors explain this decline. The...

Debt-type compensation (i.e., inside debt) exacerbates the divergence in risk preference between the CEO and shareholders that in turn affects the firm's capital structure decisions. An excessively risk-averse CEO uses debt that falls short of the shareholders' desired level, and is eager to...

Managerial compensation theory proposes that both equity- and debt-type compensation should be included in the optimal compensation contract in order to align managers' interests with those of both shareholders and debtholders of the firm. However, this reasoning also suggests that the two forms...

We hypothesize that managers who receive high equity-based compensation have greater incentive to avoid ownership dilution by timing their seasoned equity offers to periods when investors temporarily overvalue their stock. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis using a measure of...