Research Interests: 

Corporate finance, asset structure, cost structure, laws, regulations, capital raising, innovation


Working Papers

Asset Redeployability, Corporate Risk-Taking, and Investment Efficiency 

This study investigates the effects of asset redeployability on corporate risk-taking and the efficiency of corporate investments. Assets redeployability is the extent to which corporate assets have alternative use within and across industries. Using a large sample of U.S. firms from 1985-2023, we find that firms with more redeployable assets are associated with less corporate risk-taking. This finding is robust to propensity score matching, entropy balancing analysis, and other endogeneity tests. We also find that redeployable assets reduce investment efficiency. Overall, we document that the nature of firms’ assets, i.e., redeployability, plays a vital role in corporate risk-taking and investment efficiency.


Asset Redeployability and Corporate Liquidity, Douglas J. Fairhurst and S M Zahid 

(Accepted @ Financial Management) 

This paper considers the effect of asset redeployability on corporate cash holdings. Firms with redeployable assets, or assets that have usage across industries, hold significantly less cash. This finding is robust to propensity score matching and entropy balancing. To address causality, we exploit the Russian Crisis of 1998 and find evidence of a causal effect of asset redeployability on corporate cash holdings. Firms with redeployable assets also are more likely to utilize credit lines. The reduced use of cash and increased use of credit lines is most pronounced for firms that traditionally have difficulty utilizing bank credit for liquidity, such as firms with high systemic risk. The market value of cash is also lower for firms with redeployable assets. Collectively, the evidence points to an important interplay between the liquidity of the short-term portion of the balance sheet and the long-term portion of the balance sheet.


Intangible Capital and The Maturity Structure of Corporate Debt, (Sole-Authored)

This paper examines the impact of intangible capital on the maturity structure of corporate debt for U.S. firms. Firms with intangible capital also hold more debt with shorter maturity. This finding holds for matched sample analysis and an instrumental variable approach. We further explore underlying mechanisms and find that agency conflict and information asymmetry are the two potential channels that explain the negative relationship between intangible capital and debt maturity. Our findings also survive numerous robustness checks. The results collectively indicate the importance of intangible capital on firms’ financing decisions.

Research in Progress