We study the effect of asset tangibility on corporate financing and investment decisions. Financially constrained firms benefit the most from investing in tangible assets because those assets help relax constraints, allowing for further investment. Using a dynamic model, we characterize this effect — which we call firm-level credit multiplier — and show how asset tangibility increases the sensitivity of investment to Tobin’s Q for financially constrained firms. Examining a large sample of manufacturers over the 1971–2005 period as well as simulated data, we find support for our theory’s tangibility–investment channel. We further verify that our findings are driven by firms’ debt issuance activities. Consistent with our empirical identification strategy, the firm-level credit multiplier is absent from samples of financially unconstrained firms and samples of financially constrained firms with low spare debt capacity.

Investment-based asset pricing research highlights the role of irreversibility as a determinant of firms' risk and expected return. In a neoclassical model of a firm with costly scale adjustment options, we show that the effect of scale flexibility (i.e., contraction and expansion options) is to determine the relation between risk and operating leverage: risk increases with operating leverage for inflexible firms, but decreases for flexible firms. Guided by theory, we construct easily reproducible proxies for inflexibility and operating leverage. Empirical tests provide support for the predicted interaction of these characteristics in stock returns and risk.

We study distress risk premia around a bankruptcy reform that shifts bargaining power in financial distress from debtholders to shareholders. We find that the reform reduces risk factor loadings and returns of distressed stocks. The reform effect is stronger for firms with lower firm-level shareholder bargaining power. An increase in credit spreads of riskier relative to safer firms, in particular for firms with lower firm-level shareholder bargaining power, confirms a shift in bargaining power from bondholders to shareholders. Out-of-sample tests reveal that a reversal of the reform's effect leads to a reversal of factor loadings and returns.

Theoretical research in corporate finance is critical for our understanding of real-world phenomena, for interpreting empirical results, and for deriving policy implications. We discuss the benefits and limitations of research in corporate finance theory and link them to the nine articles in this special issue on “Corporate Finance Theory.” We provide a perspective on the nine articles in this special issue, and outline our perception of how future research may evolve. We also review several themes that emerge out of the articles, which we think deserve more attention from theorists going forward: interactions between financial markets and corporate finance and dynamic models of corporate decisions, such as capital structure and managerial compensation.

We examine the asset pricing implications of a neoclassical model of repeated investment and disinvestment. Prior research has emphasized a negative relation between productivity and equity risk that results from operating leverage when capital adjustment is costly. In general, however, expansion and contraction options affect risk in the opposite direction: they lower equity risk as profitability declines. The general prediction is a non-monotonic overlay of opposing real option and operating leverage effects. For parameters chosen to match empirical firm characteristics, the predicted non-monotonicities are quantitatively important, and are detectable in the data. The calibrated model implies that real option effects dominate operating leverage effects, and the average firm is best described by an increasing risk profile, a conclusion supported by conditional beta estimates. The baseline calibration helps explain the profitability premium in the cross-section, but makes the value puzzle worse. Panels with heterogeneous firms can deliver simultaneous profitability and value effects that match empirical levels.

Recent research establishes a negative relation between stock returns and dispersion of analysts’ earnings forecasts, arguing that asset prices more reflect the views of optimistic investors because of short-sale constraints in equity markets. In this article, we examine whether a similar effect prevails in corporate bond markets. After controlling for common bond-level, firm-level, and macroeconomic variables, we find evidence that bonds of firms with higher dispersion demand significantly higher credit spreads than otherwise similar bonds and that changes in dispersion reliably predict changes in credit spreads. This evidence suggests a limited role of short-sale constraints in our corporate bond data sets. Consistent with a rational explanation, dispersion appears to proxy largely for future cash flow uncertainty in corporate bond markets.

We study the interaction between financing and investment decisions in a dynamic model, where the firm has multiple debt issues and equityholders choose the timing of investment. Jointly optimal capital and priority structures can virtually eliminate investment distortions because debt priority serves as a dynamically optimal contract. Examining the relative efficiency of priority rules observed in practice, we develop several predictions about how firms adjust their priority structure in response to changes in leverage, credit conditions, and firm fundamentals. Notably, financially unconstrained firms with few growth opportunities prefer senior debt, while financially constrained firms, with or without growth opportunities, prefer junior debt. Moreover, lower-rated firms are predicted to spread priority across debt classes. Finally, our analysis has a number of important implications for empirical capital structure research, including the relations between market leverage, book leverage, and credit spreads and Tobin's Q, the influence of firm fundamentals on the agency cost of debt, and the conservative debt policy puzzle.

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the impact of macroeconomic conditions on credit risk and dynamic capital structure choice. We begin by observing that when cash flows depend on current economic conditions, there will be a benefit for firms to adapt their default and financing policies to the position of the economy in the business cycle phase. We then demonstrate that this simple observation has a wide range of empirical implications for corporations. Notably, we show that our model can replicate observed debt levels and the countercyclicality of leverage ratios. We also demonstrate that it can reproduce the observed term structure of credit spreads and generate strictly positive credit spreads for debt contracts with very short maturities. Finally, we characterize the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the pace and size of capital structure changes, and debt capacity.

ABSTRACT This paper develops a real options framework to analyze the behavior of stock returns in mergers and acquisitions. In this framework, the timing and terms of takeovers are endogenous and result from value‐maximizing decisions. The implications of the model for abnormal announcement returns are consistent with the available empirical evidence. In addition, the model generates new predictions regarding the dynamics of firm‐level betas for the period surrounding control transactions. Using a sample of 1,086 takeovers of publicly traded U.S. firms between 1985 and 2002, we present new evidence on the dynamics of firm‐level betas, which is strongly supportive of the model's predictions.

Abstract We study whether firms spread out debt-maturity dates, which we call granularity of corporate debt. In our model, firms that are unable to roll over expiring debt need to liquidate assets. If multiple small asset sales are less inefficient than a single large one, it can be optimal to diversify debt rollovers across time. Using a large sample of corporate bond issuers during the 1991–2012 period, we establish novel stylized facts and evidence consistent with our model’s predictions. There is substantial heterogeneity (i.e., firms have both concentrated and dispersed debt structures). Debt maturities are more dispersed for larger and more mature firms and for firms with better investment opportunities, higher leverage, and lower profitability. During the recent financial crisis, firms with valuable investment opportunities implemented more dispersed maturity structures. Finally, firms manage granularity actively and adjust toward target levels.