Using a standard production model, we demonstrate theoretically that, even if labor is fully flexible, it generates a form of operating leverage if (a) wages are smoother than productivity and (b) the capital-labor elasticity of substitution is strictly less than one. Our model supports using...

I propose a neoclassical production economy with costly external financing, partial investment irreversibility, and endogenous investment/financing decisions to rationalize and quantify the well-documented interaction between the book-to-market equity effect and the financial leverage effect in...

I build a dynamic capital structure model that demonstrates how business-cycle variations in expected growth rates, economic uncertainty, and risk premia influence firms' financing and default policies. Countercyclical fluctuations in risk prices, default probabilities, and default losses arise...

This paper shows that the optimal leverage decreases with asset volatility risk in a trade-off framework. Thus, the paper relates the asset volatility risk premium to the underleverage puzzle. In models without volatility risk, the paper empirically documents that underleverage increases with...

We embed a structural model of credit risk inside a dynamic continuous-time consumption-based asset pricing model, which allows us to price equity and corporate debt in a unified framework. Our key economic assumptions are that the first and second moments of earnings and consumption growth...

This paper examines the relation between industry competition, credit spreads, and levered equity returns. I build a quantitative model where firms make investment, financing, and default decisions subject to aggregate and idiosyncratic risk. Firms operate in heterogeneous industries that differ...

This paper quantifies the relative importance of labor-induced operating leverage at explaining the value premium. I extend a traditional variance decomposition methodology using labor shares to disentangle labor leverage from the value premium and from the value spread and from the variation in...

This paper investigates how the asset-return variance risk premium changes leverage. I find that the premium lowers leverage by increasing risk-neutral bankruptcy probability and costs in a model where asset returns have stochastic variance with risk premium. Empirically, the model calibrations...

I study the impact of M&As on labor market outcomes of employees in target firms. Using a matched employer-employee dataset linked with hand-collected data on M&A activity in Brazil, I estimate the magnitudes of employee costs and document the underlying sources of earnings changes in the...

International comparisons of minimum-wage levels have largely focused on minimum wages before tax, ignoring the effects of taxation on both labour costs and the net income of employees. This paper presents estimates of the tax burdens facing minimum-wage workers. Results show the evolution of...