The growing interest in everything "corporate" is fueled by a healthy combination of fundamental theoretical developments and recent widespread access to large transactional data bases. A less scientific—but nevertheless important—source of inspiration is a growing awareness of the important social implications of corporate behavior and governance. This Handbook takes stock of the main empirical findings to date across a spectrum of corporate finance issues ranging from econometric methodology to raising capital and capital structure choice. Other volumes examine corporate investment behavior and governance. Our three-volume survey captures the results of progress through a combination of large-sample data descriptions, informal hypothesis testing, as well as structural tests of theory. With researchers employing a wide spectrum of econometric techniques, institutional settings, and market structures in order to distill the central message in the data, these volumes represent an enormous effort in systematizing and analyzing the most important subjects in corporate finance. - Presents authoritative surveys and reviews of advances in theory and econometrics - Reviews recent research on capital raising methods and institutions - Includes developing countries