This study focuses on the impact of the 2001 recession as well as the subsequent expansion on U.S. trade (i.e., retail and wholesale) firms' short-term assets and liabilities. The paper also analyzes the differential effects on long-term debt and cash flow levels between retail and wholesale...

Using firm-level administrative tax data on the 43% of business liabilities in the United States tied to privately held firms, we document dramatic reductions in leverage since the Great Recession. Leverage for the average private firm fell fifteen percent between 2004 and 2018. In contrast,...

Firm-level investment paths are commonly characterised by periods of low or zero investment punctuated by large investment ‘spikes’. We document that such spikes are important for understanding firm and aggregate level investment in the UK. We show that annual variation in aggregate...

We show how the value of a real option depends on corporate income taxes and the option's “debt capacity,” defined as the amount of debt supported or displaced by the option. The value of the underlying asset must be an adjusted present value (APV). The risk-free rate of interest must be...

We show how to calculate the after-tax value of real options, including the value of interest tax shields on debt supported or displaced by the options. An option's “debt capacity” can be calculated from the adjusted present value (APV) and target debt ratio for the underlying asset, the...

We examine the joint optimization of financial leverage and irreversible capacity investment in a real options framework with risky debt and endogenous interest costs. Higher capacity, ceteris paribus, increases operating leverage and default probability, but lowers ex post adjustment costs and...

We analyze the real option signaling game models of debt financing of a risky project under information asymmetry, where the firm quality is only known to the firm management but not outsiders. The firm decides on the optimal investment timing of the risky project that requires upfront fixed...

This study extends the works of Mauer and Sarkar (2005) and Andrikopoulos (2009) by incorporating a regime-dependent earnings-based bonus into managerial compensation. Examining the individual effects of ownership shares and earnings-based bonus compensation, we find that the former provides...

This paper examines the optimal investment timing decision problem of a firm subject to a debt financing capacity constraint. We show that the investment thresholds have a U-shaped relation with the debt capacity constraint, in that they are increasing (decreasing) with the constraint for high...