The more the target knows about the bidder, the more difficult it is to pay with overpriced shares. Thus, under bidder opportunism, the fraction of stock in the deal payment is lower with better informed targets. We test this simple prediction using information proxies reflecting industry...

With zero capital structure rebalancing costs, dynamic tradeoff theory predicts that firms stay at their leverage targets with more profitable firms staying at higher leverage. This prediction is rejected by the robustly negative correlation between leverage and profitability. When rebalancing...