The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is an exogenous shock to the information environment of firms listed in the U.S. Thus, firms might adjust their capital structures to reflect the new information environment. I examine SOX's effect on capital structure. Since SOX applies only to firms listed in the...

When larger market values of equity result in being subject to costly regulation, firms have incentives to shift their sources of financing toward debt and away from equity. We use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) as a setting to provide evidence of such incentives. Smaller firms were...

When larger market values of equity result in being subject to costly regulation, firms have incentives to shift their sources of financing toward debt and away from equity. We use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) as a setting to provide evidence of such incentives. Smaller firms were...

In this paper, we ask how firms’ optimal debt structure responds to a change in the bankruptcy regime. While existing work shows that this relationship is dependent on the ex-ante liquidation value of a firm, we demonstrate that the ownership of lenders they are connected to also matters. We...

Many scholars have linked Corporate Governance (CG) and performance or CG, capital structure of banks or market structure. The decision to use the capital market or debt in order to obtain the necessary capital to finance firms' operations is a critical factor for the formulation of corporate...

Addressing the buildup of nonperforming loans (NPLs) in Italy since the global financial crisis will remain a challenge for some time and be important for supporting a sustained, robust economic recovery. The buildup reflects both the prolonged recession as well as structural factors that have...

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 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...