This dissertation consists of three studies and contributes to both capital structure and political uncertainty research. The first study provides new insights into the relationship between asset and debt maturity and maturity matching hypotheses with direct asset maturity measures from plant-level data. The second study develops a novel measure of disagreement in parliaments as a proxy for economic policy uncertainty, and empirically identifies this measure as a potential driver of firms' cost of equity capital. Finally, the third study provides empirical evidence that economic policy uncertainty is priced in an international cross-section of stock returns. The study identifies a significant effect of the exposure to economic policy uncertainty on average and risk-adjusted returns, corroborating theoretical predictions.
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This dissertation consists of three studies and contributes to both capital structure and political uncertainty research. The first study provides new insights into the relationship between asset and debt maturity and maturity matching hypotheses with direct asset maturity measures from plant-level data. The second study develops a novel measure of disagreement in parliaments as a proxy for economic policy uncertainty, and empirically identifies this measure as a potential driver of firms' cost...
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