The empirical literature provides conflicting assessments about how firms choose their capital structures. Distinguishing among the three main hypotheses (“tradeoff”, pecking order, and market timing) requires that we know whether firms have long-run leverage targets and (if so) how quickly they adjust toward them. Yet many previous researchers have applied empirical specifications that fail to recognize the potential for incomplete adjustment. A more general, partial-adjustment model of firm leverage indicates that firms do have target capital structures. The typical firm closes about one-third of the gap between its actual and its target debt ratios each year.

The re-entry of banking organizations into securities underwriting raises concerns over the possibility of banks using their lending-generated private information to benefit themselves and the issuing firm at the expense of investors. This paper illustrates the use of syndicate structure by lending banks to credibly commit against such opportunistic behavior and to exploit their proprietary information to lower issuance cost for borrowing firm issuers. We show that lending banks predominantly comanage with a high reputation nonlending underwriter. We present evidence that, relative to investment banks, comanaging issues allows lending banks to lower issuance costs for borrowing firms.