We examine a sample of 1458 divestitures of domestic assets by U.S. firms to foreign and domestic buyers over the period 1998-2008. Cross-border asset sales yield higher abnormal returns to the seller than domestic sales. This incremental return is driven by liquidity-seeking sellers engaging in...

We investigate the impact of geography on agency costs and firm dividend policies. We argue that remote firm location increases the cost of shareholder oversight of managerial investment decisions. We hypothesize that remotely located firms facing free cash flow problems precommit to higher...

Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) financing is a unique form of enhanced secured financing that is granted to firms filing for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. Opponents of DIP financing argue that such financing can lead to overinvestment, i.e., excessive investment in risky,...

This paper attempts to link the agency literature (concerned with the fact that tensions between bondholders and shareholders may trigger suboptimal investment decisions) with the one dealing with temporal resolution of uncertainty (TRU). We consider here how the speed of resolution of the...

This paper shows that illiquid growth opportunities crucially impact the agency costs of risky debt. If the value of these growth opportunities is sufficiently high, they reverse risk-shifting incentives into risk-avoidance incentives, creating a new agency cost of debt. They can also eliminate...

Recent empirical work has documented the tendency of corporations to reset strike prices on previously-awarded executive stock option grants when declining stock prices have pushed these options out-of-the-money. This practice has been criticized as counter-productive since it weakens incentives...

We derive the optimal financial claim for a bank when the borrowing firm's uninformed stakeholders depend on the bank to establish whether the firm is distressed and whether concessions by stakeholders are necessary. The bank's financial claim is designed to ensure that it cannot collude with a...

We derive the optimal financial claim for a bank when the borrowing firm's uninformed stakeholders depend upon the bank to establish whether the firm is distressed and whether concessions by stakeholders are necessary. The bank's financial claim is designed to ensure that it cannot collude with...

We examine how state antitakeover laws affect bondholders and the cost of debt, and report four findings. First, bonds issued by firms incorporated in takeover friendly states have significantly higher at-issue yield spreads than bonds issued by firms in states with restrictive antitakeover...