Title: Essays on corporate finance
Description: This dissertation consists of three essays on corporate finance. The first analyzes how firms strategically renegotiate labor contracts to extract concessions from employees. Using a unique data set of airlines that includes detailed information on wages and pensions, an empirical link between airline financial distress, pension underfunding, and wage concessions is documented. Results show that airlines in financial distress obtain wage concessions from employees whose pension plans are underfunded, further suggesting that employees' outside option in bargaining is crucial in determining the degree of wage concessions during labor contract renegotiation. The empirical evidence highlights the strategic use of pension underfunding by firms and the resultant wage cuts which employees endure as a result. The second essay investigates the empirical relation between defined benefit pension plan freezes and executive compensation. Results show that the total pay received by the firm's top executives considerably increases in years in which the company freezes its traditional pensions. Most of the 'abnormal' remuneration observed is in the form of stock options. Additionally, evidence suggests that firms with entrenched CEOs compensate their executives more handsomely for freezing the company's pensions than do firms with less-entrenched CEOs.

The evidence presented supports the implicit-contracts view of defined benefit pensions, while suggesting that the firm's top executives are the main immediate beneficiaries from freezing the company's pensions. The third essay utilizes a novel aircraft dataset to investigate the determinants and real effects of aircraft ownership form, distinguishing between leasing, debt financed ownership, and outright ownership. The analysis focuses on the role that ease of financing plays in determining the form of asset ownership, as well as on examining how asset utilization rates and the efficiency of inter-firm asset redeployment varies across different forms of asset ownership. The evidence obtained suggests that the financing environment plays a relevant role in determining the form of asset ownership. Results highlight the important role that lessors serve as intermediaries in allocating capital to more productive users, with leased aircraft being utilized at higher rates, redeployed to greater distances, and in bankruptcy being redeployed more quickly to other users.