The business cycle dynamics of firms' investment and debt maturity vary across the firm size and age distribution …: Young and small firms have strongly pro-cyclical debt maturity and investment, old and large firms a-cyclical debt maturity … and weakly pro-cyclical investment. This paper explores the importance of firms' debt maturity choices for their …

I develop a dynamic model of financing decisions and optimal debt maturity choice in which creditors face adverse …-leverage firms eventually decide to issue debt. Because shorter maturity debt is less sensitive to information, younger firms issue … shorter maturity debt to alleviate adverse selection while mature firms issue longer maturity debt, leading to a life …

We show that firms’ debt maturity structure plays an important role in investment above and beyond that of leverage …. Firms with a longer debt maturity structure tend to invest more. These results are stronger for firms with high leverage …, profitability, and growth potential. We rationalize our results in a model in which debt maturity structure is determined by the …