We critically revisit and expand previous studies on the likely valuation effect of Norway's pioneering board gender-quota law. Most important, Ahern and Dittmar (2012) report a significantly negative average abnormal stock return, which they conclude is evidence of a large shareholder-borne...

Largely constant average acquirer returns over the past four decades mask fundamental changes in the takeover market. Controlling for bidder composition, the common component of acquirer returns has increased by five percentage points relative to the 1980s. Offsetting this increase, the average...

We present strong evidence of supra-competitive pricing of debtor-in-possession (DIP) loans to large firms in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Over-collateralized and with super-priority, strong covenants, rollups, and debtor-funded monitoring costs, these loans are almost risk-free. Nonetheless, loan...

With zero capital structure rebalancing costs, dynamic tradeoff theory predicts that firms stay at their leverage targets with more profitable firms staying at higher leverage. This prediction is rejected by the robustly negative correlation between leverage and profitability. When rebalancing...

We examine whether corporate rivals react to industry-specific competition-shocks by increasing product differentiation or, alternatively, by lowering differentiation to capture scale-economies. As rival reactions affect intraindustry cash-flow correlations, these two hypotheses imply...

This essay reviews selected theories and empirical evidence describing how bidders and targets navigate four complex decisions involved in any corporate takeover attempt: (1) deal initiation, (2) pre-offer toehold acquisition, (3) offer price and revisions, and (4) the method of payment. We...