This study examines the relationship between corporate managers' political ideology and corporate leverage policies conditional on investor sentiment. Based on a minimum of 21,884 observations over the 1992-2008 period, the authors show that Republican managers significantly reduce leverage...

In this paper we provide new evidence that corporate financing decisions are associated with managerial incentives to report high equity earnings. Managers rely most heavily on debt to finance their asset growth when their future earnings prospects are poor, when they are under pressure due to...

We develop a model of managerial compensation structure and asset risk choice. The model provides predictions about how inside debt features affect the relation between credit spreads and compensation components. First, inside debt reduces credit spreads only if it is unsecured. Second, inside...

We use agency theory to investigate the influence of CEO dominance on variation in capital structure. Due to agency conflicts, managers may not always adopt leverage choices that maximize shareholders' value. Consistent with the prediction of agency theory, the evidence reveals that, when the...

We show that measurable managerial characteristics have significant explanatory power for corporate financing decisions. First, managers who believe that their firm is undervalued view external financing as overpriced, especially equity. Such overconfident managers use less external finance and,...

When partially inalienable managerial entrenchment is introduced to Zwiebel's 1996 model of dynamic capital structure, anticipated debt renegotiation between a higher-type manager and the creditor reduces expected firm value. Only lower-type managers can issue debt to avoid shareholder takeover

This article investigates the impact of the observation that managers can use cash to defer bankruptcy on default risk and corporate financial policies. I show that with managerial cash use to defer default, the impact of cash on default risk depends on two opposing channels. While cash provides...

We use a unique dataset of more than 1,000 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers around the world to investigate the degree to which executives delegate financial decisions and the circumstances that drive variation in delegation. Delegation does not appear to be...

I examine the relation between managerial ownership and the maturity structure of corporate public debt by using a sample of newly issued Japanese corporate bonds. Firms with higher managerial ownership issue shorter maturity bonds. In addition, firms with higher managerial ownership have lower...

Debt-type compensation (i.e., inside debt) exacerbates the divergence in risk preference between the CEO and shareholders that in turn affects the firm's capital structure decisions. An excessively risk-averse CEO uses debt that falls short of the shareholders' desired level, and is eager to...