In this thesis, I investigate economic and policy implications of corporate debt financing. In the first chapter, I examine whether or not leverage has a negative effect on corporate investment due to a debt overhang problem. Existing empirical studies face a challenging endogeneity problem...

Can the product diversification strategy of a firm provide a natural hedge against adverse economic conditions? We use a quasi-natural experiment to show that diversification attenuates the detrimental impact of unanticipated economic disruptions and enables diversified firms to invest more...

We find that emerging market firms exhibit dividend behavior similar to U.S. firms, in the sense that dividends are explained by profitability, debt, and the market-to-book ratio. However, empirical dividend policy equations are structurally different, indicating different sensitivities to these...