This paper examines the extent of reliance on private debt from 1980 through 1988 for a set of firms selected from Fortune 500 firms in 1980. The average firm in this set obtained more than half of its debt from private sources throughout the period, with a slight decline in the mid-1980's....

The Q-theory of mergers and acquisitions proposes that takeovers of low-Q targets by high-Q acquirers should be value creating as acquirers redeploy the targets' assets. Recent evidence on the direct relationship between Q and value creation is mixed. We present a simple model which suggests...