This paper examines the effects of the post-merger integration duration on acquiring firms’ leverage behavior before and after a merger, using a dynamic model in which full merger benefits cannot be consumed at the instant of a merger, but rather after a prespecified post-merger integration period. The model generates new implications related to acquiring firms’ leverage dynamics along with method of payment choice. Specifically, the model indicates that the post-merger integration duration is negatively associated with the market leverage of newly-merged firms at the time of merger completion and during the integration period. Further, acquirer managers are more likely to use equity to finance a merger when the integration duration is likely to be lengthy. Our empirical tests provide evidence consistent with the model implications.

Little is known about the underlying sources of gains from takeovers. Using plant-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, I show that one source of gains is increased productivity of capital and labor in target plants. In particular, acquirers significantly reduce investments, wages, and employment in target plants, though output is unchanged relative to comparable plants. Acquirers also aggressively shut down target plants, especially those that are inefficient. Moreover, these changes help explain the merging firms' announcement returns. The total announcement returns to the combined firm are driven by improvements in target firm's productivity, rather than cutbacks in wages and employment. Also, targets with greater post-takeover productivity improvements receive higher offer premiums from acquirers. These results provide some of the first empirical evidence on the direct relation between productivity, labor, and stock returns in the context of takeovers.

困扰资本结构实证研究的一个难点是如何设计一套实证研究方案，排他性地证实或证伪资本结构的某个理论支系。本文通过一套排他性的实证设计，观察四个控制子样本的资本结构调整行为，并推断出哪个理论居于支配性地位。研究结果支持了动态权衡理论，即公司存在目标资本结构，调整成本阻碍了公司趋近其目标资本结构，调整成本越低，公司趋近目标资本结构的行为越明显；中国关于股票回购的限制阻碍了公司的资本结构调整；中国并不存在“股权融资偏好”现象，融资优序理论和“股权融资偏好理论”无法解释中国公司资本结构调整行为。

We provide empirical evidence and a theoretical explanation for the asymmetries of capital growth rate at the firm level and in the aggregate. Capital growth rate at the firm level is positively skewed, while the average capital growth rate across firms, as well as its slope, is negatively skewed. We develop a model of irreversible corporate investment that can reconcile these opposite patterns. The key to our model is that firms do not observe the true state of economy and have to infer it from noisy signals. The time-varying uncertainty in the learning process leads to variations in the option value of waiting, which causes many firms to react to bad signals arriving in good times, and few firms to react to good signals arriving in bad times. As a result, the capital growth rate at the aggregate level exhibits a negative skewness both in levels and in the slope, even though irreversibility causes positive skewness at the individual firm level.

Agency theory posits that debt-like compensation (such as defined-benefit pensions and other deferred compensation) aligns managerial interests more closely with those of debtholders and reduces the agency cost of debt. Consistent with theory, we find that a higher CEO relative leverage, defined as the ratio of the CEO's inside leverage (debt-toequity compensation) to corporate leverage, is associated with lower cost of debt financing and fewer restrictive covenants, for a sample of private loans originated during 2006-2008. These findings persist after accounting for the endogeneity of CEO relative leverage, and are more pronounced for firms with higher default risk. Additional analysis on a sample of new public bond issues also shows a negative relation between CEO relative leverage and bond yield spread. Overall, the evidence supports the notion that debtholders recognize the incentive effects of executive debt-like compensation and adjust the terms of corporate debt contracts accordingly.

This study examines the effect of transaction costs and information asymmetry on firms’ capital-structure decisions in 40 countries. The findings indicate that transaction costs affect both capital-market timing and capital-structure rebalancing. Past market-timing activity has a significantly negative impact on the current debt ratio, and this impact is stronger for firms facing lower transaction costs of external financing, as defined by legal origin, capital-market development, and securities rules in their home countries. Further analysis indicates that firms in countries with lower transaction costs also rebalance their capital structure more quickly after a deviation from the target, but the rebalancing does not eliminate the market timing effect on capital structure completely.

In this paper we show that the volatility of risk is an important factor in explaining capital structure choices of firms. This effect is over and above the traditional determinants of capital structure such as the current level of risk, size, market-to-book ratio, tangibility of assets and profitability. We show that both (1) the fraction of debt in total new external financing raised by the firm, and (2) the long term debt as a fraction of the assets of the firm, are decreasing in the volatility of risk of the firm. Moreover this negative relationship is significantly stronger for firms that do not have a credit rating. These results are consistent with the theoretical reasons that we provide to explain the negative relationship between leverage and volatility of risk.

In this paper we compare counterfactual corporate bond issuing dates to actual issuing dates in order to test the ability of firms to time the credit market. The 50 most active bond issuing financial firms and the 50 most active industrial firms are studied using one week, one month, and one quarter windows. The ability to time firm-specific CDS prices is studied from January 2002 - October 2009. The ability to time the risk-free rate (10 year US government bond) is studied from January 1988 - October 2009. We find that: firms do not successfully time the risk-free rate or the credit spreads. There is no evidence of CDS timing ability over one week or one month, but there is some borderline evidence at one quarter. For a typical bond issue, the firm loses about 1% of the face value of the bond relative to a 1 month window, due to their inability to time the market. If the firms could improve their market timing, they could save many hundreds of millions of dollars. Since there is a degree of statistical predictability in the data, we find it surprising that these firms are not able to do a better job of timing the credit market.

技术分析方法是否有效一直是富有争议的话题。本文收集整理了1997-2010年我们股票上出现的346 次股价长期横盘形态，用logit模型检验了技术交易规则在中国市场的有效性，并在实证中引入持股集中度等影响技术交易规则有效性的重要因素，同时发现存在其他约束条件如横盘请价格波动方向、平均股价等对横盘后的方向选择有密切关系。

Modern financial development theories suggest that, financial development can promote technological progress and long-term economic growth. Based on the Chinese mainland provincial panel data, the paper tests empirically the relation between financial intermediation development and total factor productivity growth. In terms of the degree-of-freedom of bank loan decision-making, the ratio of loans of private enterprises and individuals to total loans is used to measure the development of Chinese financial intermediation. This paper finds that financial intermediation development significantly promotes total factor productivity growth when controlling for other variables, such as capital formation rate, foreign direct investment, government intervention and the urbanization level