The paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic conditions on firms' capital structure. We introduce a repeated lender-borrower interaction that allows for debt and equity financing to co-exist as optimal securities in every period. The presence of asymmetric information in the market for...

We study physician agency and optimal payment policy in the context of an expensive medication used in dialysis care. Using Medicare claims data we estimate a structural model of treatment decisions, in which physicians differ in their altruism and marginal costs, and this heterogeneity is...

We introduce uncertainty into Holmstrom and Milgrom (1987) to study optimal long-term contracting with learning. In a dynamic relationship, the agent's shirking not only reduces current performance but also increases the agent’s information rent due to the persistent belief manipulation...

We analyze relational incentive contracts with hidden action when the principal and the agent have different discount factors, and identify a new agency cost that exists only when they cannot commit themselves to long-term contracts and the agent is more patient than the principal. We show that...

We consider a "tenure-clock problem" in which a principal may set a deadline by which she needs to evaluate an agent's ability and decides whether to promote him or not. We embed this problem in a continuous-time model with both hidden action and hidden information, where the principal must...

In a simple risk-sharing environment with ex post private information, conditions are found under which a collateralized debt contract is the optimal allocation. The critical condition for optimality is that the borrower values the collateral good more highly than does the lender; otherwise the...

We examine whether managerial overconfidence impacts the use of performance-pricing provisions in loan contracts (PSD). Managers with biased views may issue PSD because they consider this form of debt to be mispriced. Our evidence shows that overconfident managers are more likely to issue...

We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the tax consequences of renegotiating U.S. syndicated loans to isolate the effect of renegotiation costs on initial contract terms. TD9599 materially reduced the tax burden of renegotiating U.S. syndicated loans, while leaving the taxation of...