Three Essays on Empirical Corporate Finance

The second essay follows up on the first by investigating whether debt repurchase activity is consistent with the existence of an optimal capital structure. I find that the timing and size of debt repurchases are consistent with trade-off theories of capital structure. Specifically, the likelihood and size of debt repurchases is increasing in a firm's deviation from its estimated target. The positive abnormal returns around the announcement of repurchases are increasing in the deviation from the target debt level, consistent with an optimal capital structure.