In this article, Stephen Prowse investigates how owners of commercial banks encourage management to follow value-maximizing policies. While the "corporate control mechanism" in nonfinancial firms is well documented, for the banking industry much less evidence is available. Moreover, unique...

This paper uses rich, new data to examine the fleets of corporate jets operated by both publicly traded and privately held firms. In the cross-section, firms owned by private equity funds average jet fleets at least 40 percent smaller than observably similar publicly-traded firms. Similar fleet...

The authors document that the U.S. non-financial corporate sector became a net lender in the 2000s, using aggregate and firm-level data. They develop a structural model with investment, debt, and equity. Debt is fiscally advantageous but subject to a no-default borrowing constraint. Equity...