We examine CEO-board dynamics using a new panel dataset that spans 1920 to 2011. The long sample allows us to perform within-firm and within-CEO tests over a long horizon, many for the first time in the governance literature. Consistent with theories of bargaining or dynamic contracting, we find...

This article reviews empirical capital structure research, concentrating on papers published since 2005. We begin by documenting three dimensions of capital structure variation: cross firm, cross industry, and within firm through time. We summarize how well the traditional trade-off and pecking...

Using a novel dataset of accounting and market information that spans most publicly traded nonfinancial firms over the last century, we show that U.S. federal government debt issuance significantly affects corporate financial policies and balance sheets through its impact on investors' portfolio...

Unregulated U.S. corporations dramatically increased their debt usage over the past century. Aggregate leverage - low and stable before 1945 - more than tripled between 1945 and 1970 from 11% to 35%, eventually reaching 47% by the early 1990s. The median firm in 1946 had no debt, but by 1970 had...

Unregulated US corporations dramatically increased their debt usage over the past century. Aggregate leverage — low and stable before 1945 — more than tripled between 1945 and 1970 from 11% to 35%, eventually reaching 47% by the early 1990s. The median firm in 1946 had no debt, but by 1970...

We put the recent increase in corporate cash in historic perspective by studying nearly 100 years of average and aggregate cash holdings. Corporate cash more than doubled in the first 25 years of our sample before returning to 1920 levels by 1970. Since then, average and aggregate patterns...

This paper reviews empirical capital structure research, concentrating on papers published since 2005. We begin by documenting three dimensions of capital structure variation: cross-firm, cross-industry, and within-firm through time. We summarize how well the traditional trade-off and pecking...

This paper conducts surveys that document CFO perspectives on corporate planning, corporate investment, capital structure, payout, and the goal of the firm. Current policy choices are compared to CFO survey data from two decades prior, which allows me to identify decision-making themes that are...