This paper investigates whether and how economic policy uncertainty affects corporate debt maturity. Using a large firm … a shortened debt maturity. Moreover, the impacts are stronger for innovation-intensive firms. We use firms’ flexibility … in changing debt maturity and the deviation to leverage target to gauge the causal relationship, and identify the reduced …

This paper investigates whether and how economic policy uncertainty affects corporate debt maturity. Using a cross … uncertainty is significantly associated with a shortened debt maturity. Specifically, a 1% increase in economic policy uncertainty … is associated with a 0.22% decrease in the long-term debt-to-assets ratio and a 0.08% decrease in debt maturity. Moreover …

We show that firms’ debt maturity structure plays an important role in investment above and beyond that of leverage …. Firms with a longer debt maturity structure tend to invest more. These results are stronger for firms with high leverage …, profitability, and growth potential. We rationalize our results in a model in which debt maturity structure is determined by the …