Because the personal tax treatments of interest and dividend income likely affect the relative cost of debt and equity financing, a sharp change in tax treatment could affect firms' optimal leverage. This paper examines the effect of the 2003 equity income tax cut on firms' debt usage. Because...

Theory and recent evidence suggest that overvalued firms can create value for shareholders if they exploit their overvaluation by using their stock as currency to purchase less overvalued firms. We challenge this idea and show that, in practice, overvalued acquirers significantly overpay for...

The rapid increase in U.S. house prices during the 2001--2006 period was accompanied by a historically rapid expansion of bank assets. We exploit cross-regional variation in local housing booms to study how housing demand shocks affected the growth of the banking sector. We estimate the effect...

Because the personal tax treatments of interest and dividend income likely affect the relative cost of debt and equity financing, a sharp change in tax treatment could affect firms' optimal leverage. This paper examines the effect of the 2003 equity income tax cut on firms' debt usage. Because...

The past two decades have witnessed a sharp surge in corporate equity payout. The annual net equity payout of non-financial public companies in the U.S. averaged $525 billion (in 2010 dollars) per year from 2004 to 2019, compared to only $141 billion during the prior 17-year period. Using...