Credit default swaps (CDS) represent a major innovation in debt markets, allowing lenders to transfer credit risk to a counterparty by paying a premium. Shan, Tang, and Winton (2019) explore whether the availability of CDS affects the monitoring incentives of lenders. Their paper finds that CDS...

This paper develops a measure of disclosure investment strategy using data envelopment analysis (DEA) to apply a production formulation to firms' investments in mandatory and voluntary disclosures. Conceptually, the “disclosure production” of a firm consists of a variety of disclosure...

This study examines the selection of financial ratio covenants in debt contracts. Expanding on existing theory and evidence, I predict that loan contracts will include covenants with ratios that are informative of credit risk based on borrower or contract characteristics. The results support...

Recent years have seen a preponderance of accounting research using data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure efficiency. In this study, I examine the calculation of efficiency using DEA, with a focus on large panel datasets of financial accounting data. Using simulation and archival data, I...

In this paper we propose a measure of managerial ability, based on managers' efficiency in generating revenues, which is available for a large sample of firms and outperforms existing ability measures. We find that our measure is strongly associated with manager fixed effects, and that the stock...

I examine the use of financial covenants when contracting for debt under uncertainty. Uncertainty, in the context of this study, is a lack of information about future economic events and their consequences for the borrower's creditworthiness. I examine the implications of ex-ante uncertainty...

Following a 2008 rule change by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission designed to simplify and expand smaller firms’ abilities to raise public equity, small firms increasingly issue public equity via confidentially-marketed public offerings (CMPOs). CMPOs pair confidential pre-offering...