We show that firm demand-side factors are strong drivers of procyclical refinancing behavior over the credit cycle using novel data from the Shared National Credit program. Firms are more likely to refinance early when credit conditions are good to keep the effective maturity of their loans long and hedge against having to refinance in tight credit conditions. High credit quality firms are better able to hedge, making their refinancing propensity more sensitive to credit cycles than less creditworthy firms. There is a strong relationship between refinancing a loan, and subsequent growth in capital expenditure, especially when a loan is refinanced early.

We develop a model of the joint capital structure decisions of banks and their borrowers. Bank leverage of 85% or higher emerges because bank seniority both dramatically reduces bank asset volatility and incentivizes risk-taking by producing a skewed return distribution. Nonfinancial firms choose low leverage to protect their banks, presenting a partial resolution to the low-leverage puzzle. Our setup naturally extends to include government actions as we model bank assets using a modified Basel framework. Deposit insurance and bailout expectations lead banks and borrowers to take on more risk. Capital regulation lowers bank leverage but can increase bank risk due to a compensating increase in borrower leverage. Despite this, doubling current capital requirements reduces bank default risk by up to 90%, with only a small increase in loan interest rates.

If opportunistic acquirers can buy targets using overvalued shares, then there is an inefficiency in the merger and acquisition (M&A) market: the most overvalued rather than the highest-synergy bidder may buy the target. We quantify this inefficiency using a structural estimation approach. We find that the M&A market allocates resources efficiently on average. Opportunistic bidders crowd out high-synergy bidders in only 7% of transactions, resulting in an average synergy loss equal to 9% of the target’s value in these inefficient deals. The implied average loss across all deals is 0.63%. Although the inefficiency is small on average, it is large for certain deals, and it is larger when misvaluation is more likely. Even when opportunistic bidders lose the contest, they drive up prices, imposing a large negative externality on the winning synergistic bidders.

Personal managerial indiscretions are separate from a firm's business activities but provide information about the manager's integrity. Consequently, they could affect counterparties’ trust in the firm and the firm's value and operations. We find that companies of accused executives experience significant wealth deterioration, reduced operating margins, and lost business partners. Indiscretions are also associated with an increased probability of unrelated shareholder-initiated lawsuits, Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, and managed earnings. Further, chief executive officers and boards face labor market consequences, including forced turnover, pay cuts, and lower shareholder votes at re-election. Indiscretions occur more often at poorly governed firms where disciplinary turnover is less likely.