Using a sample of 1,560 new debt financings, we examine the choice among bank debt, non-bank private debt, and public debt. The primary determinant of the debt source is the credit qualit y of the issuer. Firms with the highest credit quality borrow from public sources, firms with medium credit...

I investigate the motives for issuance and the debt choices of 427 firms which issue long-term debt for the first time in their history between 1971 and 1999. Their first debt issues are very large relative to firm size and represent a permanent shift in firm financing policy. The amount issued...

We investigate whether the existence of traded options represents an economically important relaxation of short sale constraints. Our analysis has three prongs. First, to the extent that option listing relaxes a binding constraint, we would expect to see investors taking synthetic short...