I develop a hypothesis that predicts nonlinear patterns of leverage and cash holdings over firms' financial flexibility demand stages. The hypothesis also predicts distinctive financing patterns over the financial flexibility demand stages. The empirical results support the hypothesis:...

A recent dramatic rise in the assets managed by passive corporate debt funds has profound implications for firm financing and payout policy. I use fund-specific flows to isolate exogenous increases in firm-level passive debt ownership at a firm. Firms respond to higher levels of passive debt...

We study two court rulings that materially affected dividend taxation in several European countries. The tax changes were not related to economic conditions or part of broader policy initiatives, providing a useful experiment for identifying the effect of taxation on capital structure, payout,...

We use a new international setting to test and strengthen the identification of “target leverage hypothesis” in the payout policy literature. We conduct a quasi-natural experiment induced by staggered share repurchase legalization in 17 economies and analyze its influences on leverage...

We explore whether theoretically the target leverage and pecking order models can be reconciled with payout smoothing. Investment absorbs a significant part of income and asset volatility if the firm follows both a payout target and a net debt ratio (NDR) target. A positive (negative) NDR...

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic massively increased uncertainty about firms’ cash flows and their access to financial markets. We examine its effect on firms’ strategies for preserving cash by suspending dividends and buybacks and raising new funds through bond and equity issues. We...

We provide the first firm-level evidence of the relation between state ownership and debt structure. Using an international sample of newly privatized firms (NPFs) from 76 countries over the 1998–2017 period, we find that state ownership is associated with a more diversified debt structure....

We evaluate motives for share repurchases using a unified framework where a firm has a target capital structure and has equity that can be mispriced. We document that capital structure adjustments are a value-increasing motive for repurchases and that the extent to which adjusting capital...

We model a risk-averse firm owner who wants to maximize the intertemporal expected utility of firm’s dividends. The optimal dynamic control problem is characterized by two stochastic state variables: the equity value, and profitability (ROA) of the _rm. According to the empirical evidence, we...

This paper's purpose is to compare nonprofits with pass-throughs in terms of valuation, leverage, and growth. To achieve this purpose, we use the Capital Structure Model. This model determines maximum firm valuation through incorporating real data (tax rates, credit spreads, and historical...