We develop an asset-pricing model with endogenous corporate policies that explains how inflation jointly impacts real asset prices and corporate default risk. Our model includes two empirically grounded nominal frictions: fixed nominal coupons and sticky profitability. Taken together, these two...

This paper investigates how the degree of managerial expropriation affects equity volatility of individual firms. We develop a corporate finance model with endogenous financing policies and manager-shareholder agency conflicts, and identify two countervailing forces. First, in response to...

We study how shifting global macroeconomic conditions affect sovereign bond prices. Bondholders earn premia for two sources of systematic risk: exposure to low-frequency changes in the state of the economy, as captured by expected macroeconomic growth and volatility, and exposure to...

We propose an explanation for default contagion based on a Lucas model with two independent debt-financed trees. The transmission mechanism is that variations in the size of one tree impact the level of risk premium and the default decision for all borrowers. If a negative shock hits one tree,...

We show that firm default risk is the primary predictor of the comovement between corporate bond and stock returns, both in the cross-section and over time. Intuitively, bonds of less creditworthy firms behave more like the issuing firms’ stocks, resulting in higher future comovement. We find...