An Empirical Assessment of Empirical Corporate Finance

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions across a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd et al. to appraise the extent to which prevailing empirical specifications explain variation of the dependent variable, differ in composition of fit arising from various classes of independent variables, and exhibit resistance to omitted variable bias and other endogeneity problems. We assess empirical performance across a wide spectrum of areas in corporate finance and indicate varying research opportunities for empiricists and theorists.