Revaluations of industry peers around horizontal acquisitions are negative when targets are private, but positive when they are public. We posit this “revaluation spread” arises because acquiring managers favor private targets when public firms are overvalued. Targets' ownership status thus...

We analyze the incentives created by debt financing in political campaigns. Debt is a significant source of funding for political campaigns, with almost half of all campaigns relying on some form of debt. Moreover, indebted politicians raise more funds in subsequent elections, especially from...

We analyze a novel data set of corporate contributions to ballot initiatives and referendums at the U.S. state level. Firms make significant contributions to ballot measures in favor of or against specific initiatives. Firms that contribute to successful (failed) direct initiated state...

We build a dynamic model of investment and financing decisions to study the choice between bonds and bank loans in a firm's marginal financing decision and its effects on corporate investment. We show that firms with more growth options, higher bargaining power in default, operating in more...

This paper analyzes the effects of loan contract amendments and insider trading on stock returns. Loan renegotiations are frequent and contain potentially relevant information about the financial health of firms. Because managers and officers are better informed about the outcome of such...

This paper analyzes the effects of product market competition on zombie firms in the US using a large sample of publicly traded firms. First, we show that the asset-weighted share of zombie firms at the industry level decreases significantly with more competition. This decrease is mostly...