The paper reviews and interprets capital structure theory in a stylized way and explains the conceptual issues, consequences, and implications for financial management. Firms face an uncertain world that does not co-operate with many of the assumptions of the theory. Specific attention is paid...

I develop a highly tractable dynamic general equilibrium model with collateralized lending and securitization in which asset-backed securities (ABS) function as a mechanism for risk sharing. Entrepreneurs who face aggregate and idiosyncratic investment risks can borrow from a menu of...

Using a longitudinal dataset comprising of detailed financial and exporting data from Belgian small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) between 1998 and 2013, this article examines the manner in which firms manage to finance their export activities and the resulting impact on corporate capital...

This study investigates the relationship between institutional ownership and dividend payout behavior of the firm in Germany. Using a propensity scoring method estimator to control for endogeneity problems, we find evidence that neither institutional ownership nor bank control is statistically...

This paper presents a dynamic model of the firm with risk-free debt contracts, investment irreversibility, and debt restructuring costs. The model fits several stylized facts of corporate finance and asset pricing: First, book leverage is constant across different book-to-market portfolios,...

Excessive credit growth, poor risk assessment and lax lending standards in the run up to the 2008 global crisis led to unsustainable debt build-up in banks and related corporates. A weak framework for the governance of largely state-owned banks is likely to have contributed to the misallocation...

This paper shows that long debt maturities eliminate equityholders' incentives to reduce leverage when the firm performs poorly. By contrast, short debt maturities commit equityholders to such leverage reductions. However, shorter debt maturities also lead to higher transactions costs when...

Economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism. To empirically investigate its impact, we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents, home equity, and 1880 farmland. We identify its effects on...

This study evaluates the capital-structure determinants of Latin American firms using a comprehensive sample covering seven countries. Firms in the region have debt levels similar to those of U.S. firms, which is puzzling, given that Latin American firms experience relatively lower tax benefits...