Using a sample of 277 firms from eight East Asian economies, the relationship between financial distress and firm performance during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998 was tested. The crisis provides an exogenous shock which reduces the endogeneity issues between firm performance and leverage. The results from this study reaffirm that firms with low financial leverage tend to perform bette...

This paper develops a simple business-cycle model in which the financial sector originates a structural change that has large macroeconomic effects when private agents are gradually learning their economic environment. When the persistence of the unobserved process driving financial shocks to the leverage ratio changes, the responses of output and other aggregates under adaptive learning are si...

Asymmetric volatility refers to the stylized fact that stock volatility is negatively correlated to stock returns. Traditionally, this phenomenon has been explained by the financial leverage effect. This explanation has recently been challenged in favor of a risk premium based explanation. We develop a new, unlevering approach to document how well financial leverage, rather than size, beta, boo...

We empirically examine the influence of risk on firms’ capital structure adjustments. The process of adjustment is asymmetric and depends on the type of risk, its magnitude, the firm’s actual leverage with respect to its target, and its financial status. We show that firms with financial surpluses and above-target leverage adjust their leverage more rapidly when firm-specific risk is low and wh...

I construct a macroeconomic model with a financial sector in which the severity of financial downturns depends on size differences in the banking sector and average bank leverage. In my model, a more concentrated banking sector deepens and prolongs financial downturns for two reasons: returns on assets decrease more, and banks sharply decrease the liquidity supply in the interbank market. Calib...

This paper presents a model on the leverage of …nancial intermediaries, where debt are held by risk averse agents and equity by the risk neutral. The paper shows that in an unregulated competitive market, …nancial intermediaries choose to be leveraged over the social best level. This is because the leverage of one intermediary imposes a negative externality upon others by reducing their pro…t m...

We employ a model of leverage-induced explosive behavior in financial markets to develop a measure of financial market instability. Specifically, we derive a quantitative condition for how large levered investors can become relative to the whole market before the demand curve for securities suddenly becomes upward-sloping and small price declines cascade as levered investors are forced to liqui...

This study uses a random effect panel model to examine the impact of CEO traits and compensation on earnings performance and financial leverage for the 729 listed US companies in ExecuComp over the period of 2001– 2010. The results indicate that CEO cash compensation has a negative relationship with earnings performance, but that it has a positive impact on financial leverage. Moreover, for CEO...

entities must restate their comparative financial statements when they correct prior periods accounting errors or change accounting methods. although financial restatements have adverse effects on the relevance and reliability of financial statements’ information, financial restatement has increased considerably among listed companies in tehran stock exchange, tse, in the recent years. the main...