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...

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...