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...

We document the cross-sectional properties of corporate dividend smoothing policies and relate them to extant theories. We find that younger, smaller firms, firms with low dividend yields, more volatile earnings and returns, and firms with fewer and more disperse analyst forecasts smooth less....

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...

While dividend smoothing is taken as an article of faith, little is known about the cross-sectional properties of smoothing policies. Why do some firms smooth more than others? We examine firms' dividend smoothing behavior across a wide spectrum of publicly traded firms in the U.S. We find that...

New York's merchandise export performance has trailed the nation's for several years. The cause of this gap is not easy to identify: the state maintains a relatively healthy mix of customer markets, remains well represented in industries with strong foreign demand, and continues to enjoy...

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...

Yes. We show that dividend changes contain information about highly persistent changes in future economic income. Three methodological differences lead us to different conclusions from the extant literature: (i) we use an “event window approach” to cleanly delineate earnings after dividend...

We study time-series and cross-firm variation in corporate cash holdings over the past century. The recent increase in cash is not unique in magnitude. However, the recent divergence between average and aggregate cash is new and entirely driven by a shift in cash policies of newly public firms,...