Deregulation significantly affects firms’ debt decisions. Prior to deregulation, regulated firms depend more on long-term and public debt but reduce this dependence considerably during deregulation. Cross-sectional analysis shows that the lower use of long-term and public debt results from changing firm sensitivities to determinants of debt decisions triggered by deregulation. Consistent with credit and liquidity risk theories of debt maturity, the concave relation between firm quality and debt maturity is attenuated among regulated firms. Inconsistent with these theories, the convex relation between firm quality and public debt issues exists only among regulated firms. I find limited support for other theories.

Deregulation is endogenous. It is preceded by poor industry performance and is predictable with performance variables. These results imply that merger activity following deregulation should be systematically related to poor pre-deregulation industry performance. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find that post-deregulation mergers serve a contractionary role. Bidders and targets in post-deregulation mergers are poor performers prior to the merger and operate with significant excess capacity. Consistent with the hypothesis that post-deregulation mergers represent a form of exit, the frequency of cash and bankruptcy mergers is significantly higher following deregulation and the offer premium is significantly lower.