We examine the role of non-venture private equity firms in the market for divested businesses, comparing targets bought by such firms to those bought by corporate acquirers. We argue that a combination of vigilant monitoring, high-powered incentives, patient capital and business independence...

An enduring puzzle is why credit rating agencies (CRAs) use a few categories to describe credit qualities lying in a continuum, even when ratings coarseness reduces welfare. We model a cheap-talk game in which a CRA assigns positive weights to the divergent goals of issuing firms and investors....

This paper develops a theory in which the owners of firms pursue short-termism in project choice to limit managerial rent-seeking behavior. Unlike in previous theories, a short-term bias in investment horizons maximizes firm value in the second-best case, whereas managers themselves prefer...

This paper studies how industry peers respond when another firm in the industry is the subject of a hostile takeover attempt. We document two major responses. First, the industry peers cut their capital spending, free cash flows, and cash holdings, and increase their leverage and payouts to...

We develop a dynamic model of investment, capital structure, leasing, and risk management based on firms' need to collateralize promises to pay with tangible assets. Both financing and risk management involve promises to pay subject to collateral constraints. Leasing is strongly collateralized...

This paper investigates the effect of financing frictions due to source of capital, on firm investment and value. Using instrumental variables approach that controls for endogeneity arising from demand-side factors, we find that firms with access to public debt markets have 11% higher investment...

This paper studies Reverse Asset Substitution (RAS), an agency problem in which banks place investment and borrowing restrictions on firms as part of a strategy to extract surplus from the firms over multiple periods. RAS arises for firms that cannot access public debt markets due to agency...

We examine the effect of ownership and governance structures on what is arguably a firm's most valuable asset: its reputation. We model reputations based on alterable organizational and structural firm characteristics rather than the personal characteristics of the management team. We show that,...

We develop a structural model to quantitatively analyze the effects of asymmetric beliefs and agency conflicts on capital structure. Capital structure reflects the dynamic tradeoff between the positive incentive effects of managerial optimism and the negative effects of risk-sharing costs....

This paper examines how the firm's choice of investment horizon interacts with rent-seeking by privately-informed, multi-tasking managers and the labor market. There are two main results. First, managers prefer longer-horizon projects that permit them to extract higher rents from firms, so...