Performance evaluation for universities or research institutions has become a hot topic in recent years. However, the previous works rarely investigate the multiple departments’ performance of a university, and especially, none of them consider the non-homogeneity among the universities’...

We study optimal capital structure by first estimating firm-specific cost and benefit functions for debt. The benefit functions are downward sloping reflecting that the incremental value of debt declines as more debt is used. The cost functions are upward sloping, reflecting the rising costs...

U.S. nonfinancial business debt increased substantially in recent years in both absolute and relative terms and is now near its record high. Figure 1 shows that most of this increase was due to significant growth in investment-grade (IG) corporate bonds and institutional leveraged loans, while...