While reports in the financial press suggest that share repurchases are harmful to bondholders, academic studies report conflicting empirical evidence. Using newly available daily bond data (versus monthly data used in existing studies) and modern methods of analysis, we find no evidence of bondholder wealth expropriation. Merton (1974) model estimates of changes in the value of debt during share repurchases and changes in credit ratings following share repurchases produce no evidence of bondholder wealth expropriation. Overall, we find no evidence that repurchases measurably harm bondholders, suggesting concerns raised in the financial press are unfounded.

We compare CRSP dividend data to data from firms' financial statements in the SEC's EDGAR database. Data screens typically used in the extant literature produce a sample in which about half of the apparent reductions in dividends per share are not actually dividend cuts. Many of the fictitious cuts are due to CRSP misclassifying special dividends as regular dividends. We demonstrate that the fictitious cuts can affect point estimates and inferences in studies of the information content of dividends. We provide a simple filter that eliminates most of the fictitious cuts in our sample – remove dividend cuts from the sample that are preceded by a dividend increase in the prior quarter. This filter produces empirical results that are similar to our sample of true cuts.

This paper presents evidence that distressed firms with politically connected executives and board members are more likely to reorganize outside of court than to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This relation is more evident for firms that have more political importance, such as major employers within a state, firms located in swing states, and in periods leading up to major election dates. The evidence suggests that the expected costs of financial distress are lower for politically connected firms which may partially explain the higher leverage ratios of politically connected firms documented in the extant literature.

Despite the evidence that full funding of defined benefit pension obligations is value maximizing, managerial price and volatility sensitivities (deltas and vegas) do not appear to influence funded status for all except the CFOs of plan sponsors with weak credit ratings (Anantharaman and Lee, 2014). Whether realized total compensation (as opposed to changes in the value of securities held) encourages full funding is an open question. Here we examine the empirical relation between realized managerial compensation and the extent to which plan liabilities are funded, and find that CEO pay bears a significant relation with funded status.

This paper examines the ability of latent firm and manager characteristics to explain variation in innovation productivity. Evidence suggests that latent, but not observable, firm and manager characteristics explain a large portion of the variation in a firm's innovation productivity. Our tests mostly show that latent firm characteristics explain slightly more of the variation relative to latent manager characteristics. For robustness, our analysis shows no significant difference in the average change in innovation productivity and in abnormal returns following two different samples of manager-firm separations: one where managers' expected innovation abilities are high and the other a random sample. Overall, the results suggest that compared to firm characteristics, managers matter moderately less for corporate innovation.

We document that employee bankruptcy costs affect corporate capital structure decisions via their impact on the bargaining power of labor unions. We employ difference-in-differences and triple-difference research designs surrounding a major bankruptcy reform that increased personal bankruptcy costs. Our results suggest that, on average, this reform reduced unions’ bargaining power, resulting in a decrease in the financial leverage of unionized firms relative to nonunionized firms. Our results provide new evidence for a relatively unexplored determinant of capital structure—personal bankruptcy costs.

In this article we examine whether and how changes in personal bankruptcy laws, viewed as a shock to employees’ expected personal wealth, affect corporate policies. Following a reform in personal bankruptcy laws that limits individuals’ access to bankruptcy protection, firms more affected by this regulation reform increase labor costs, reduce investment, and engage in less risk taking. The effects are stronger when employees have more bargaining power. Furthermore, firms in industries characterized by high unemployment risk reduce leverage. These results support the view that firms choose more conservative policies to mitigate employees’ expected welfare losses.