The paper reviews and interprets capital structure theory in a stylized way and explains the conceptual issues, consequences, and implications for financial management. Firms face an uncertain world that does not co-operate with many of the assumptions of the theory. Specific attention is paid...

This study is the first to explore the determinants of the egocentric lending networks of stock listed companies in China. Egocentric lending networks are constructed using the public loan announcements of firms listed on China's two stock exchanges combined with cross-ownership shares...

The depreciation of the Hungarian forint in 2009 left Hungarian borrowers with a skyrocketing value of foreign currency debt. The resulting losses worsened debt overhang in to debt-ridden firms and eroded bank capital. Therefore, although Hungarian banks had partially isolated their balance...

We investigate the determinants of the capital structure of Brazilian companies between 2000 and 2009. We use a quantile regression model and compare its results with the ones provided by conventional models (least squares and fixed effects). We show that the effects of the capital structure...

This paper presents a dynamic model of the firm with risk-free debt contracts, investment irreversibility, and debt restructuring costs. The model fits several stylized facts of corporate finance and asset pricing: First, book leverage is constant across different book-to-market portfolios,...

Financial arrangements determine how and the amount of financing that can be obtained from fund providers. An optimal allocation between equity and debt is determined by the trade-off between the net tax advantage of additional corporate leverage and the costs associated with the increased...

Excessive credit growth, poor risk assessment and lax lending standards in the run up to the 2008 global crisis led to unsustainable debt build-up in banks and related corporates. A weak framework for the governance of largely state-owned banks is likely to have contributed to the misallocation...

This paper shows that long debt maturities eliminate equityholders' incentives to reduce leverage when the firm performs poorly. By contrast, short debt maturities commit equityholders to such leverage reductions. However, shorter debt maturities also lead to higher transactions costs when...

Economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism. To empirically investigate its impact, we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents, home equity, and 1880 farmland. We identify its effects on...