Investment-based asset pricing research highlights the role of irreversibility as a determinant of firms' risk and expected return. In a neoclassical model of a firm with costly scale adjustment options, we show that the effect of scale flexibility (i.e., contraction and expansion options) is to...

This paper documents novel evidence that private debt contains value-relevant nonpublic information with significant economic value. We extract banks' private information from term loan spreads. Abnormal loan spreads significantly predict firms' future operating performance and uncertainty...

This paper documents a new high risk-low return puzzle. Specfically, we find that a forward-looking risk measure extracted from credit line undrawn spreads negatively predicts borrowers' future stock returns. This negative risk-return relation is separate from previously documented asset pricing...

A standard real options model predicts a strong positive interaction effect between research and development (R&D) investment and product market competition. R&D-intensive firms tend to be riskier and earn higher expected returns than R&D-weak firms, particularly in competitive industries. Also,...