This paper proposes the yield spread between public bonds and bank loans of the same firm (the Bond-Bank spread) as a measure of compensation for agency costs that cannot be mitigated by bondholders but can be mitigated by banks due to their ability to monitor the firm and renegotiate the loan....

The U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy system has long been viewed as equity friendly, with absolute priority deviations (APD) in favor of equity holders occurring as often as in 75% of the cases in the 1980s. By contrast, based on a more recent and much larger sample of bankruptcies from the period...

We investigate gender differences in insider trading behavior of senior corporate executives in the U.S. between 1975 and 2005. We find that, on average, both female and male executives make positive profits from insider trading, but males earn about twice as much as females; males also trade...

We study the exposure of the US corporate bond returns to liquidity shocks of stocks and Treasury bonds over the period 1973 - 2007 in a regime - switching model. In one regime, liquidity shocks have mostly insignificant effects on bond prices, whereas in another regime, a rise in illiquidity...

Using a novel information asymmetry index based on measures of adverse selection developed by the market microstructure literature, we test whether information asymmetry is an important determinant of capital structure decisions, as suggested by the pecking order theory. Our index relies...