We analyze the value to firms of being able to renegotiate covenants in their debt contracts. Covenants control agency problems, but also reduce firms' flexibility to pursue profitable investments. Initial covenants will be more severe for renegotiable contracts, because they can be relaxed selectively when the lender believes they pose an inefficient constraint. We show firms with high ex ante credit risk find the option to renegotiate most valuable. The model is used to explain why bank loans and privately placed debt typically have harsher covenants than public debt and to predict which firms will borrow using closely held debt. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D82, G21, G32.

This is the first study to examine both how well plan administrators select funds for 401(k) plans and how participants react to plan administrator decisions. We find that, on average, administrators select funds that outperform randomly selected funds of the same type although they do not outperform index funds of the same type. When administrators change offerings, they choose funds that did well in the past, but, after the change, added funds do no better than dropped funds. Plan participants in aggregate change their allocation decisions in a way that accentuates the changes in allocation caused by returns. The change in allocation due to the investment of new money and interfund transfers is about the same size, and in the same direction, as the change due to returns. Participant allocations in aggregate do no better than naïve allocation rules, such as equal investment in each offering.

We examine the robustness of empirical models and findings concerning CEO turnover. We show that the sensitivity of turnover to abnormal firm performance is an extremely robust result. In contrast, evidence indicating a relation between turnover and industry performance is both weak and fragile. We show that small changes in turnover modeling choices can affect inferences in a large way. Our evidence casts substantial doubt on the hypothesis that there is a large industry performance component to turnover decisions. We use our findings to offer some general prescriptions for checking robustness results in CEO turnover research. Received June 6, 2017; editorial decision July 10, 2017 by Editor Uday Rajan.

We investigate how liquidity regulations affect banks by examining a dormant monetary policy tool that functions as a liquidity regulation. For causal inference, we use a regression kink design that relies on the variation in a marginal high-quality liquid asset requirement around an exogenous threshold. We show that mandated increases in liquidity cause banks to reduce credit supply. Liquidity requirements also depress banks’ profitability, though some of the regulatory costs are passed on to liability holders. We document a prudential benefit of liquidity requirements by showing that banks subject to a higher requirement just before the financial crisis had lower odds of failure.

Speculative language in corporate disclosures can convey valuable information about firms’ fundamentals. We evaluate this idea by developing a measure for speculative statements based on sentences marked with the “weasel tag” on Wikipedia. In the 16-week test period after filing, greater use of speculative statements in 10-Ks predicts higher and nonreverting abnormal returns, more insider and informed buying, and higher news sentiment. These findings imply that managers’ usage of speculative language in 10-Ks reflects voluntary disclosure of their private information about the positive prospects of events when market implications of the events are uncertain and thus have room for (re)interpretation.

We analyze a firm’s choice between dividends and stock repurchases under heterogeneous beliefs. Firm insiders, owning a certain fraction of equity, choose between paying out cash available through a dividend payment or a stock repurchase, and simultaneously choose the scale of the firm’s project. Outsiders have heterogeneous beliefs about project success and may disagree with insiders. In equilibrium, the firm distributes value through dividends alone, through a repurchase alone, or through a combination of both. In some situations, the firm may raise external financing to fund its payout. We also develop results for long-run stock returns following dividends and repurchases. (JEL G32, G35) Received June 2, 2020; editorial decision November 3, 2020 by Editor Andrew Ellul.

We study an environment with short-sale constraints and heterogeneous beliefs among outsiders and between insiders and outsiders. Firm insiders choose between equity, debt, and convertible debt to raise external financing. We analyze two settings: one in which heterogeneous beliefs is the only market imperfection and another in which there are significant security issue and financial distress costs. Our model generates a pecking order of external financing different from asymmetric information models, and new predictions for capital structure, sequential tranching of securities, the price impact of security issues, and long-run stock returns. We also provide a new rationale for convertible debt issuance.