Corporate leverage responds differently to employees' rights in bankruptcy depending on whether it is driven by strategic concerns in wage bargaining or by credit constraints. Using novel data on employees' rights in bankruptcy, we estimate their impact on leverage, exploiting time-series,...

Using the SEC’s 2016 Tick Size Pilot Program (TSPP) as a natural experiment, we investigate the effects of investors’ information acquisition on equity versus debt financing. We find a significant increase in firms’ preference for equity over debt issuance after the TSPP’s...

Four new ratios, that capture firms' Stability, Downside Risk and Audit Quality, are significant predictors of financial distress as evidenced by bankruptcy. Moreover, they improve substantially a logit based credit metric when combined with other classic ratios. A credit metric that comprises a...

We investigate whether mandatory recognition of previously disclosed off-balance sheet items affects corporate capital structure decisions. Specifically, we use the introduction of the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 158 as a quasi-exogenous shock to financial reporting decisions...

We contribute to the literature on “market timing” by exploring periods of simultaneous equity issues and debt retirements (a leverage decreasing recapitalization, LDR). We hypothesize and show that such LDRs are driven by measures of creditor control but are not predicted by capital...

In this paper, I study the inclusion of cost savings and synergy add-backs (cost-synergy add-backs hereafter) in loan contracts. Such add-backs allow borrowers to add unrealized cost savings and synergy gains into contractual earnings calculations and thus reflect timely gain recognition in debt...

Prior to 2018, U.S. repatriation taxes motivated companies to retain cash offshore. Using confidential jurisdiction-specific data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we find that firms with high tax-induced foreign cash have approximately 3.3 percent higher domestic liabilities relative to...

EBITDA is a commonly-used performance measure for (1) valuation, (2) debt contracting, and (3) executive compensation. The widespread use of EBITDA by stakeholders may induce managers to focus their attention on EBITDA. Since EBITDA excludes various expenses, managers who fixate on EBITDA may...

The study investigated the impact of capital structure decisions on the financial performance of the selected Indian IT firms. The analysis based on the fixed and random effect regression model using panel data collected for the period 2008 to 2019 of 43 selected Indian IT companies listed in...

This paper studies the effect of financial constraints and financial distress on accounting restatements; specifically, we empirically analyse whether several firm-specific characteristics-namely, the level of leverage, the cost of debt, and the interest coverage ratio-influence the likelihood...