Using corporate property insurance contracts of small and medium-sized private firms, I document negative relations between various ownership measures --- CEO salary, ownership concentration and aggregate female ownership --- and insurance use as well as a positive relation between the number of...

In a deterministic overlapping-generations economy with production and physical capital, the price of debt can be positive without any budget surpluses being in the offing, because debt incorporates a rational bubble. Yet the dynamics of debt remain a function of the dynamics of the primary...

We analyze the interlinkages between foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign portfolio investment (FPI) between Germany and the major economies. First, we show that Tobin's q helps explaining the variation of the growth rate of the stock of FDI. Second, we show that foreign and the home...

This research addresses whether geographic diversification provides benefits over industry diversification. In the absence of constraints, no empirical evidence is found to support the argument that country diversification is superior. With short-selling constraints, however, the geographic...

Using a database of more than 180,000 private companies from 2000 to 2009, we find that the benefits of holding more cash vary substantially with a firm’s size and the conditions it faces. Cash holdings matter most for small firms: when there are negative shocks to industry or macroeconomic...

We investigate whether corporate finance incentives affect the extent of corporate hedging with property insurance. Using a database that contains detailed insurance information, we document a positive relation between the expected costs of distress and property insurance coverage. We also show...

In this article we construct a model in which agents exhibit preference for ownership with respect to a durable (house). Ownership is modeled as a continuous function of debt service normalized by the price of the house. We study the utility optimization problem of an investor not endowed with...