We develop a unified framework to connect cash holding, debt maturity and mergers and acquisitions. We provide empirical support for four internally consistent predictions: i) equity and debt values of highly distressed firms are more sensitive to cash reserve than those of healthy firms; ii)...

Firms' inflexibility to adjust their scale persistently explains capital structure variations in a comprehensive sample and randomly-selected sub-samples. Higher inflexibility leads to lower financial leverage, potentially due to higher default risk and lower value of tax shields. Contraction...

This paper studies the behavior of leverage ratios in a dynamic trade-off model with real frictions. Firms underutilize debt when financing investment to retain financial flexibility. Underutilization of debt persists even when firms exercise their last investment options, and it is more (less)...

We study the interplay between corporate liquidity and asset reallocation opportunities. Our model shows that financially distressed firms are acquired by liquid firms in their industries even when there are no operational synergies associated with the merger. We call these transactions...

A large body of empirical work documents that prices of traded goods change by a smaller proportion than real exchange rates between the trading countries (incomplete pass-through). The wedge between exchange rates and relative prices also varies a cross countries (pricing-to-market). I present...

We investigate theoretically and empirically the relationship between the geographic structure of a multinational corporation and its risk premium. Our structural model suggests two channels. On the one hand, multinational activity offers diversification benefits: risk premia should be higher...