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We quantify the real implications of trade-offs between firm information disclosure and long-term investment efficiency. We estimate a dynamic equilibrium model in which firm managers confront realistic incentives to misreport earnings and distort their real investment choices. The model implies a socially optimal level of disclosure regulation that exceeds the estimated value. Counterfactual analysis reveals that eliminating earnings misreporting completely through disclosure regulation incentivizes managers to distort real investment. Lower earnings informativeness raises the cost of capital, which results in a 5.7 |$\%$| drop in average firm value, but more modest effects on social welfare and aggregate growth. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document a hump-shaped relation between corporate cash and both real and nominal interest rates in both aggregate and firm-level data. We rationalize this result in a model where firms finance investment with cash and risky debt. The risky rate rises endogenously with the risk-free rate, spurring precautionary cash demand. Simultaneously, foregone interest lowers cash demand. The first mechanism dominates at low interest rates, and the second at high interest rates. The model matches several data moments and reproduces a nonmonotonic cash–interest relation. This nonmonotonicity implies that interest rates are unlikely to be behind the recent rise in corporate cash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss various ways in which inference based on the estimation of the parameters of statistical models (reduced-form estimation) can be combined with inference based on the estimation of the parameters of economic models (structural estimation). I discuss five basic categories of integration: directly combining the two methods, using statistical models to simplify structural estimation, using structural estimation to extend the validity of reduced-form results, using reduced-form techniques to assess the external validity of structural estimations, and using structural estimation as a sample selection remedy. I illustrate each of these methods with examples from corporate finance, banking, and personal finance. I conclude by exploring the role of robust estimation techniques in structural estimation in corporate finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]