We show that firm liability structure and associated cash flow matter for firm behavior, and that financial market participants price stocks accordingly. Looking at firm level stock price changes around monetary policy announcements, we find that firms that have more cash flow exposure see their...

Contrary to the central prediction of signaling models, changes in profits do not empirically follow changes in dividends. We show both theoretically and empirically that dividends signal safer, rather than higher, future profits. Using the Campbell (1991) decomposition, we are able to estimate...