The He and Krishnamurthy models imply that the financial intermediary sector – measured broadly, and not just focused for example on hedge funds – has leverage that rises during crisis. The prediction is due to a mix of general equilibrium and corporate finance arguments. First, in the model, in general equilibrium the intermediary sector must retains the bulk of risk exposure from intermediate...

A home is the single largest purchase that most households make, and it is one that usually requires some debt financing. Because housing debt is such a large component of households’ balance sheets, it is important to understand the financing decision. In this paper, we use household level data from the HILDA survey to relate households’ leverage to their observed characteristics using both gr...

This study finds that managers take the deviations from their target capital structures into account in planning and structuring acquisitions. Specifically, firms that are overleveraged relative to their target debt ratios are less likely to make acquisitions, are less likely to fund acquisitions with debt, acquire smaller targets, pay lower premiums and receive favorable market reactions to ac...