We examine the effect of risk-shifting incentives on the relation between collateral and corporate borrowing capacity. The increase in gold prices during the 2008-2009 financial crisis provided a positive shock to the collateral value of gold firms, in contrast to the average firm that...

We use exchange-traded options to identify risks relevant to capital structure adjustments in firms. These forward-looking market-based risk measures provide significant explanatory power in predicting net leverage changes in excess of accounting data. They matter most during contractionary...