We gather the most comprehensive database of government bonds for the first globalisation era to date to conduct the first historically informed study of the importance of liquidity for colonial and sovereign yield spreads. Considering both liquidity and credit shows that the two markets were...

In this study, we investigate the role of national culture in firms' choice between bank debt and public debt. We postulate that culture influences corporate debt choice through five channels. Using a new international dataset on debt structure and a large sample of firms from 30 countries, we...

A firm with less redeployable assets, which are assets that have fewer alternative uses outside the firm, is more likely to borrow from banks than issue public debt. These findings are consistent with firms with less redeployable assets valuing the ability to renegotiate bank debt contracts...

Using a novel hand-collected dataset of business combination disclosures, we investigate whether and how fair-value adjustments (FVAs) arising from mergers and acquisitions facilitate debt financing. FVAs are the difference between the fair value and the book value of the target's net assets. We...

This paper investigates the gap-filling explanation for corporate debt maturity choices in a multi-country setting. We argue that companies adjust their debt maturity in response to shocks in government debt maturity both at home and abroad; the difference between the two effects depends on the...

Using a novel dataset of accounting and market information that spans most publicly traded nonfinancial firms over the last century, we show that U.S. federal government debt issuance significantly affects corporate financial policies and balance sheets through its impact on investors' portfolio...

We propose a model that explains the build-up of short term debt when the creditors are strategic and have different beliefs about the prospects of the borrowers' fundamentals. We define a dynamic game among creditors, whose outcome is the short term debt process as a function of the borrower's...

Using a novel dataset of accounting and market information that spans most publicly traded nonfinancial firms over the last century, we show that U.S. federal government debt issuance significantly affects corporate financial policies and balance sheets through its impact on investors' portfolio...

This paper empirically investigates how the degree of debt specialization varies because of profitability levels, affecting the organizational determinants and debt structure choices. Using a novel data of 419 firms from 2009 to 2015, we find a significant difference in the usage of debt types...