We examine the optimal financing of infrastructure when governments have limited financial commitment and can expropriate rents from private sector firms that manage infrastructure. While private firms need incentives to implement projects well, governments need incentives to limit...

Firms are increasingly resorting to private placements in recent years, yet there is no published study of emerging markets. There is a unique opportunity to study this behavior during a severe financial crisis, when firms resorted to private placements to recover financially distressed firms....

Nearly 40% of IPO firms redact information from their SEC registration filings. These firms exhibit characteristics consistent with the need to shield proprietary information from potential rivals. They experience greater underpricing, but pre-IPO insiders reduce underpricing-related wealth...

This paper uses a sample of Chinese firms to examine the impact of corporate opacity on the relationship between family control and firms' cost of debt. We find that family control is associated with a lower cost of debt on average, and a negative impact exists mainly in firms with relatively...

The expected cost of capital is a crucial component for most of the topics in corporate finance. Unfortunately in the presence of risky debt, it is systematically overestimated. This bias is increasing in leverage and the volatility of cash flows. We show the existence of the bias and assess its...

Worldwide, primary corporate bond markets have become an increasingly important source of financing for non-financial companies. This trend is coupled with a relative decrease in traditional bank lending to non-financial companies and low levels of bond interest rates. Just as shareholders,...

We study whether shocks to the supply of capital affect bond covenant structures using the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. and the subsequent regulatory changes as an exogenous contraction in the supply of speculative-grade credit around 1989. We find that speculative-grade firms...

Worldwide, primary corporate bond markets have become an increasingly important source of financing for non-financial companies. This trend is coupled with a relative decrease in traditional bank lending to non-financial companies and low levels of bond interest rates. Just as shareholders,...

This study investigates how debt maturity structure is influenced by the strength of shareholder rights. The empirical evidence reveals an inverse relation between the strength of shareholder rights and debt maturity. We contend that managers of firms with weak shareholder rights eschew choosing...