My dissertation aims at understanding the financing and investment decisions of firms. It contains two chapters.Chapter One studies the currency composition of debt for firms in emerging economies. Using a dataset of traded Mexican firms, I document two stylized facts about firms in the...

What is the cross-sectional relationship between financial leverage and expected equity returns? How is the empirical relationship associated with firm's financial decisions? This dissertation investigates the potential explanations for the flatness relation between financial leverage and...

We embed a structural model of credit risk inside a dynamic continuous-time consumption-based asset pricing model, which allows us to price equity and corporate debt in a unified framework. Our key economic assumptions are that the first and second moments of earnings and consumption growth...

The availability of a unique data set of financially distressed firms enabled this study to apply the dynamic capital structure adjustment model to a study of capital structure. In addition, the factors driving capital structure adjustment of financially distressed and of healthy firms were...

This thesis comprises of three essays. The first essay is titled 'Do Acquiring Firms Manage Earnings?' and is co-authored with Professor Anand M. Vijh. The second essay is titled 'Do Firms Have a Target Leverage? Evidence from Credit Markets' and is joint work with Professors Anand M. Vijh and...

This study examines capital structure of hospitality firms from a behavioral perspective based on the hubris theory that emphasizes the effect of managerial overconfidence on corporate decisions. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between manager overconfidence and financing...