This study examines whether corporate share repurchases are responsible for the decline in labor share among U.S. firms since the 1980s. Using census data and various empirical approaches, we find no evidence suggesting that increases in share repurchases contribute to reductions in labor share. We find no correlation between share repurchases and labor share declines, and the firms most engaged in repurchases do not decrease labor share. Using exogenous variation linked to EPS announcements and taxation policies, we further validate these findings, indicating that policies aimed at improving labor share by discouraging share buybacks are unlikely to meet their objectives.

While recent studies show that long vesting periods in managerial compensation increase corporate investments, these investments such as research and development contribute to information asymmetry and therefore may affect the maturity structure of corporate debt. We find that firms with longer CEO pay duration have shorter debt maturity, which is consistent with the notion that firms shorten debt maturity to mitigate information asymmetry. This effect is stronger for firms with larger bid-ask spread, less analyst coverage, more growth options, more volatile returns, and lower default risk and for firms in R&D intensive industries. Firms with longer CEO pay duration prefer debt issuance over equity issuance, and they also exhibit higher future investment growth and Tobin's Q. We strengthen the identification by exploiting the quasi-randomly staggered compliance of a regulatory change (FAS 123-R) and the enforceability of noncompetition agreements as exogenous shocks to CEO pay duration. Our paper shows that the duration of executive compensation affects corporate financing decisions.

This paper investigates the impact of institutional shareholder investment horizons on a firm's use of bank debt. We find that short-term institutional ownership of the borrowing firm has a negative effect on bank debt financing. This finding provides evidence consistent with the monitoring avoidance incentives of short-term shareholders. In contrast, long-term institutional ownership has a positive impact on the firm's reliance on bank debt financing. These effects are attenuated by higher managerial ownership and more motivated investors and are exacerbated by higher information opacity. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity concerns, the potential use of bonds, firm size effects, and alternative measures of investment horizon. Investigating the effects of investment horizons on other aspects of debt corroborates our main findings.

Studies have analyzed the impact of firm and issue characteristics but not liquidity and solvency components of financial distress on the use of bond covenants. Using a comprehensive database of corporate bonds from 2001 to 2012, we find that firm liquidity, measured by standardized Lambda, has a negative statistical and economic impact on the inclusion of all categories and sub-categories of restrictive bond covenants. Developed from financial statement information by Emery and Lyons (1991), Lambda is designed as a coverage ratio that, under certain distribution assumptions, maps into the probability of a firm being unable to pay its short-term bills. The strongest solvency proxy is the 10-year credit default swap (CDS) spread which is significant across the categories and sub-categories for investment and payment covenants, weakly significant for the subordinated debt sub-category of the subsequent financing covenant, but strongly significant for the control poison put sub-category of event covenants. This evidence supports a model that uses SLambda as a proxy for liquidity risk and the 10-year CDS spread as a proxy for solvency risk. The liquidity/covenant relationship is dampened when firms have access to commercial paper funding or bank loans. However, during the recent financial crisis liquidity event this liquidity/covenant relationship was enhanced especially for firms which were dependent on commercial paper during this time when the commercial paper market was deteriorating.

This paper examines the effects of shareholder investment horizons on insider trading. We find that insiders are less likely to trade on private information and the profitability of insider trades is lower when shareholder investment horizons are longer. We further examine two channels through which shareholders with longer investment horizons can impede insider trading: direct monitoring and better information environment. Consistent with the direct monitoring channel, we show that insiders in firms with longer shareholder investment horizons are more likely to shift trades from the month right before earnings announcements to the month right after earnings announcements. Moreover, the impact of investment horizons are stronger in firms with higher ex ante litigation risk, with lower corporate governance quality, and that are not targets of hedge fund activists. Consistent with the information environment channel, we show that longer shareholder investment horizons increase the frequencies of information disclosure and insiders in firms with longer shareholder investment horizons are more likely to trade in an isolated manner rather than in sequences.