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 develops a quantitative framework for analyzing the impact of macroeconomic conditions on credit risk and dynamic capital structure choice. We begin by observing that when cash flows depend on current economic conditions, there will be a benefit for firms to adapt their default and...