Essays on Coporate Finance

My thesis consists of two distinct chapters on empirical corporate finance. In the first chapter, we examine whether and how firms’ inflexibility is priced in the corporate bond market. We find robust evidence that firms with higher inflexibility have higher bond yield spreads. Chapter 2 studies the shareholder activism around U.S. public firms’ mandated disclosure of the CEO-employee pay ratio. By exploiting the staggered reporting of a firm’s pay ratios, I find shareholders submit fewer governance proposals but pass more. My finding reveals the unintended consequences of the mandated pay ratio disclosures.