We study the leverage of U.S. firms over their life cycles and the connection between firm leverage, firm growth, and aggregate shocks. We construct a new dataset that combines private and public firms’ balance sheets with firm-level data from U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business...

Government policies that attempt to alleviate credit constraints faced by small and young firms are widely adopted across countries. We study the aggregate impact of such targeted credit subsidies in a heterogeneous firm model with collateral constraints and endogenous entry and exit. A defining...

Using data drawn from the universe of firms to avoid sample censoring problems, this paper finds financial constraints to be binding on mid-sized firms and those in construction and services sectors only. Growth of the majority of firms is unaffected by financial burdens. Firm size distribution...

This paper investigates whether there are relationships between corporate governance characteristics, firms' performance, credit allocation and merit of credit. We hoped to find some influences of qualitative characteristics, which are often overlooked. The study look at 75,512 firms (European...

Firms may have gender differences in governance characteristics, which may lead to differences in the firms' performances themselves, and consequently in the way credit is allocated. The paper demonstrates that there are differences in governance characteristics and, most important, there is a...

Directors need to guide and govern companies on behalf of and for the benefit of shareholders and stakeholders (Adams, Hermalin, & Weisbach, 2010; "Duties of directors," 2011). However questions remain as to whether boards with higher levels of diversity amongst directors are better equipped to...

The main goal of the paper is to understand if the shareholder composition must be considered as part of the corporate governance framework or as monitoring factor. A related goal of the paper is to investigate if the shareholder composition must be included in the loop among the corporate...

How many and which firms issue equity and bonds in domestic and international markets, how do these firms grow relative to non-issuing firms, and how does firm performance vary along the firm size distribution (FSD)? To evaluate these questions, we construct a new dataset by matching data on...

How many and which firms issue equity and bonds in domestic and international markets, how do these firms grow relative to non-issuing firms, and how does firm performance vary along the firm size distribution (FSD)? To evaluate these questions, we construct a new dataset by matching data on...

Access to external finance is a major obstacle for small and young firms; thus, providing subsidized credit to small and young firms is a widely-used policy option across countries. We study the impact of such targeted policies on aggregate output and productivity and highlight indirect general...