This paper investigates the influence of social capital on young firms' financing arrangements. Using a sample of U.S. start-ups, I find that social capital, as captured by secular norms and social networks in the entrepreneur's county, increases access to outside financing and reduces reliance on owner equity to finance the new venture. Financing to entrepreneurs located in counties with greater social capital involves higher amounts of leverage in the form of outside debt. This finding persists in a difference-in-difference test that controls for unobservable geographic determinants of capital structure.

This paper provides empirical evidence that lumpy investment projects provide firms with the opportunity to adjust leverage at low marginal cost. Consistent with a theoretical model, I find that 1) firms sequence equity before debt during the financing period of their investment projects, and 2) that firms adjust their leverage ratios toward their target leverage during these investment periods. I also show that proactive increases in leverage observed in other studies can be explained by the evolution of firms' target leverage ratios over the financing period of a project. My results are consistent with trade-off theory and imply that firms move toward their target capital structures when they invest.

We examine the relation between the level of trust in a country and corporate cash holdings. The precautionary savings motive predicts that firms located in countries with less trusting societies will hoard more cash in order to compensate for reduced access to capital markets. The agency hypothesis predicts that shareholders in countries with low levels of societal trust will pressure firms to disgorge cash. The first theory predicts a negative relation between trust and corporate cash holdings while the second theory predicts a positive relation between these two variables. Using data on firms located in 54 countries around the world, we find evidence in favor of the agency-based explanation for the relation between trust and corporate cash holdings. Overall, our results highlight the role played by informal institutions in shaping corporate financial management.

Funding risk measures the extent to which a fund can borrow money by posting collateral. Using a novel measure of funding risk based on futures margins, we are able to empirically identify the mechanism by which changes in funding risk affect the likelihood of contagion. An increase in margins of the order of magnitude observed during the subprime crisis increases the probability of contagion among certain types of funds by up to 34%. Our analysis shows that some types of hedge funds are more vulnerable to contagion than others. Our results also suggest that policies that limit the magnitude of changes in margins over short periods of time may reduce the likelihood of contagion among hedge funds.

We examine changes in debt structure when firms experience financial distress. At these points in time, firms refinance and undergo substantial changes in priority structure. Specifically, we find that firms diversify their priority structure relative to its pre-distress composition. We show, using a simple model, that these changes are the firm's optimal response to its joint liquidity and investment needs. Additional predictions on the yield spreads of bonds issued to meet the firm's liquidity needs are also supported by the data.

Priority spreading refers to the practice of firms increasing their reliance on secured and subordinated debt and reducing their reliance on senior debt as their credit quality deteriorates. We argue that priority spreading occurs because security provides creditors with greater protection from dilution from other creditors than do covenants that prioritize payments. Consistent with this argument, we find that secured bank creditors are rarely diluted by junior creditors in distressed restructurings, whereas senior unsecured creditors are frequently diluted, exogenous increases in asset volatility result in greater priority spreading and yields on senior and subordinated bonds converge as asset volatility increases. Received January 22, 2018; editorial decision January 27, 2019 by Editor David Denis.