Excessive risk taking and the maturity structure of debt

This paper analyses the effect of short term debt on equityholders' risk taking decisions. We show that if short term debt limits the expropriation of debtholders, it also implies a lower leverage, which prevents the firm from increasing tax shields. We then examine the incentive of equityholders to increase the firm risk when debtholders hold the option to swap a perpetual coupon bond with short term debt. We find that this option mitigates equityholders' risk shifting incentives. Compared to standard short term debt, this restructuring option deters debtholders expropriation, it increases leverage and it reduces the loss in tax shields due to asset substitution.     

Credit risk and asymmetric information: A simplified approach

We present a simple model for risky, corporate debt. Debtholders and equityholders have incomplete information about the financial state of the debt issuing company. Information is incomplete because it is delayed for all agents, and it is asymmetrically distributed between debtholders and equityholders. We solve for the equityholders' optimal default policy and for the credit spreads required by debtholders. Delayed information accelerates the equityholders' optimal decision to default. Interestingly, this effect is small, implying only a small impact on credit spreads. Asymmetric information, however, has a major impact on credit spreads. Our model predicts high credit spreads for short-term debt, as observed empirically in credit markets.     

Contraction flexibility,operating leverage,and financial leverage

This study investigates the impacts of contraction flexibility and operating leverage on financial leverage from the perspective of the agency conflict between shareholders and debtholders. In a continuous-time real option framework, we demonstrate that shareholders’ contraction flexibility may have an adverse effect on financial leverage, and that the substitution relation between operating leverage and financial leverage is persistent or pronounced in the presence of contraction flexibility. The evidence from Chinese listed firms not only supports our theoretical predictions well, but also offers a method to examine the agency conflict hypothesis. We suggest that the high proportion of bank loans or long-term debt in total liabilities can help levered firms alleviate the agency problem arising from contraction decisions.     

Growth option,debt maturity and cash reserves with bank-tax-interaction

In this paper, we assume a small and micro enterprise(SME, henceforth) invests in a project, of which the investment cost is funded by the private lending and the bank-tax-interaction (BTI, henceforth). We build a tractable model of optimal investment, liquidity and default decisions based on cash flows with liquidity shocks and profitability uncertainty. In contrast to the case with pure private lending, we discover that BTI delays investment and increases the firm value. Furthermore, BTI causes the SME to retain more cash reserves. We also find that the SME prefers to select the BTI as the main financing policy under the higher liquidity risk and small profitability uncertainty. Besides, the impact of debt maturity on financial policies with BTI depends on liquidity shock.     

Economic policy uncertainty and cost of debt financing: International evidence

Prior research shows that economic policy uncertainty affects a wide range of corporate financial decisions; however, there is little research on the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and cost of debt financing across countries. In this paper, we argue that economic policy uncertainty affects cost of debt financing through two mechanisms including information asymmetry and default risk. With a sample of 163,243 firm-years across 17 countries from 2003 to 2016, we find that economic policy uncertainty positively affects cost of debt financing and this effect is stronger during the global financial crisis from 2008 to 2009. Moreover, our research findings show that large firms’ debt financing cost is less affected by economic policy uncertainty.     

The influence of ownership structure and board independence on the cost of debt in BRIC countries

Agency theory predicts that the default premium on debt is determined by the intensity of agency conflicts since they affect the risk of debtholders. This effect is especially important in emerging countries with high ownership concentration and low protection of minority owners. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the influence of ownership structure and board independence on the cost of debt in BRIC countries over the period 2007–2020. The main finding of the study is the presence of significant country-specific effects of ownership structure on the cost of debt measured with the G-spread on corporate bonds, as well as the absence of effects of board independence. According to our results, concentrated ownership and state ownership increase the cost of debt in Brazil and Russia, while decreasing it in China. We reveal that institutional investors help mitigate the risks of debtholders in China, while insider ownership decreases the default risk in Brazil.     

Corporate borrowing and growth option value: The limited liability effect

A firm issues bonds before undertaking a risky continuous investment project that is costly to later either expand or contract. The firm’s existing debt load causes it to install a smaller capacity because equity has limited liability. This lowers debt value, but such a cost should be borne by equityholders because debtholders will rationally anticipate equityholders’ future behavior. The firm’s choice of debt levels balances this agency cost against the tax shield benefit. As the firm incurs higher costs to later expand capacity, its growth option value becomes lower. The simulation results of this article are in line with Myers’ conjecture (1977), which states that a firm’s debt capacity is inversely related to its growth option value.     

Investment and capital structure decisions of foreign subsidiary with international debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty

This paper examines the impact of international debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty on investment and capital structure decisions of foreign subsidiary. We find that debt shifting induces earlier investment, earlier default, higher leverage, and larger ex ante firm value of foreign subsidiary. When debt shifting is not so costly, the optimal leverage of foreign subsidiary increases as the tax rate differential increases. Moreover, when the correlation between exchange rate and foreign cash flow uncertainties is positive (negative, respectively), foreign investment advances as exchange rate uncertainty increases (decreases) as well as the correlation increases. These results reveal that the impact of debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty on investment and capital structure policies cannot be ignored, supporting existing empirical findings.     

负债来源、会计信息质量与企业投资

本文以中国上市公司为研究对象,考察了在高风险项目企业中会计信息质量对企业新增投资支出的影响,揭示了会计信息质量在债权人保护中的作用。实证结果表明:高质量的会计信息能够抑制高风险项目企业的新增投资支出,这样的抑制效果在高风险项目企业的主要负债来源为非商业银行时表现的更加显著。     

投资效率是被“债务融资”束缚了手脚吗?

本文从信息不对称和代理冲突的角度研究分析了中国制造业上市企业投资效率的多重约束决定机制.研究发现中国制造业上市企业的投资效率主要取决于企业自身盈利能力,而债务融资对改善企业投资效率的作用有限,相反债务融资放松了企业的资金约束,助长了企业过度投资.改善企业投资效率应当从增强企业盈利能力入手,优化企业资源配置.强化事中、事后披露,改善信息不对称状况,有利于提高债务融资对管理层过度投资行为的约束.     

CEO overconfidence and agency cost of debt: An empirical analysis of CEO turnover events

We develop a model and characterize the differences between the investment policies of a rational CEO and an overconfident CEO. In the presence of risky outstanding debt, we show that an overconfident CEO has the incentive to overinvest more than that of a rational CEO. However, this incentive is mitigated by the discipline imposed by outside investors when an overconfident CEO seeks external financing. In contrast, when the firm has sufficient internal funds to meet its investment needs and outstanding debt is relatively safer, the overconfident CEO has no necessity to seek external funds and the overinvestment incentive persists. We examine bondholders’ and stockholders’ reaction around CEO turnover announcements and find evidence consistent with the over investment hypothesis.     

融资结构与资本预算方法选择

传统的资本预算方法因没有考虑负债对企业的影响,权衡理论认为负债会给企业带来节税收益,降低股东与经理之间的代理成本,同时也会给企业带来财务困境成本和股东与债权人之间的代理成本。修正现值法、权益现金流量法和加权平均资本成本法,是西方主流反映负债融资对投资项目价值正负效应杠杆企业的资本预算方法。本文对此进行了探讨。     

Asset sale,debt restructuring,and liquidation

This paper considers a dynamic model in which shareholders of a firm in distress have a choice of whether the firm proceeds to debt restructuring or direct liquidation at an arbitrary time. In the model, we show the following results. Fewer asset sales, lower financing, debt renegotiation, and running costs, a lower premium to the debt holders, a lower cash flow volatility, and a higher initial coupon increase the shareholders׳ incentive to choose debt restructuring to avoid full liquidation. In the debt renegotiation process, the shareholders arrange the coupon reduction and use equity financing to retire a part of the debt value to the debt holders. The timing of debt restructuring always coincides with that of liquidation without debt renegotiation. Most notably, the shareholders do not prefer asset sale in debt restructuring even if they face high financing costs. The possibility of debt renegotiation in the future increases the initial leverage ratio in the optimal capital structure.     

资产流动性损失下财务危机重组研究

本文从资产结构的角度探讨资产流动性对财务危机重组的影响，建立了一个考虑资产流动性的财务危机模型。同时根据股东一经理人是否能与债权人协商及公司债务契约中有无优先偿债禁止条款，在不同情形下，分析了财务危机中各个请求权人因应策略和投资效率。本文研究表明，债权人会容忍某些程度的投资无效率以避免无谓的资产流动性损失；当债权人无法协商时，无论投资项目净现值为正或负，股东一经理人都将进行投资，使财务危机公司发生过度投资无效率问题；当债权人可协商时，虽然还是无法完全消除财务危机公司过度投资行为，但是可以改善上述问题。     

Catering to investors through capital expenditures: Testing assets substitution problem around financing

We test the catering theory, which describes how investor preferences might influence individual firms' investment financing decisions. To the best of our knowledge, our study may well be the first that directly connects catering with asset substitution to contrast the magnitude of catering by bondholders and shareholders. And indeed, it is interesting to find that although catering behavior is found to exist among both corporate bond and seasoned equity offering (SEO) managers, the coexistence of both appears to offset the abnormal investment phenomena of either underinvestment or overinvestment. The study results further reveal that firms engage in overinvestment when catering to conversion holders of existing convertible bonds. Taken together, we find that support for the asset substitution and abnormal investment argument is strong from a stockholder–bondholder conflict.     

企业技术创新能力对资本成本影响差异性的实证研究——基于不同生命周期视角

通过研究2013—2016年深市中小板上市公司发现，企业技术创新能力越强，权益和债务资本成本也就越低，同时技术创新能力对权益资本成本的影响程度要大于对债务资本成本的影响。进一步研究发现，不同生命周期的企业技术创新能力对权益和债务资本成本的影响有明显差异，处于成熟期的企业技术创新能力对权益资本成本影响更大，处于成长期的企业技术创新能力对债务资本成本影响更大。因此企业应注重提高技术创新能力，降低资本成本。同时股东和债权人应充分识别投资企业所处生命周期阶段，从而选取合理投资方案。     

Oligopoly, Financial Structure, and Resolution of Uncertainty

We characterize equilibria of a multistage game in which competing duopolists may acquire and share information in advance of choosing their financial structure which, in turn, precedes production. Given sufficient uncertainty, equilibria exist in which the efficiency and, possibly, coordination gains to acquiring and sharing perfect information are sufficient to break Brander and Lewis's (1986) result wherein both firms issue debt to their mutual disadvantage. However, more interesting may be the robustness of that result when uncertainty is low or when information is imperfect. The key insight is that the consequences of issuing debt are invariant to the level of uncertainty, given that firms can recalibrate the terms of debt to achieve the Stackelberg solution.     

Valuation of R&D investment under technological,market, and rival preemption uncertainty

We develop a real options model for evaluating and optimizing a research and development (R&D) project. The model captures key features of R&D, including research duration, growth opportunity, debt financing, and uncertainty of technology, demand market, and rival preemption. In the model, we unveil the interactions of key R&D features. The effect of duration on investment depends on whether there is rival preemption. Higher uncertainty of research duration speeds up investment in the presence of rival preemption. Higher uncertainty of technological success, combined with a growth opportunity, accelerates investment. Debt financing greatly decreases time lag between the first stage project and growth project.     

Corporate Opacity and Cost of Debt for Family Firms

This paper uses a sample of Chinese firms to examine the impact of corporate opacity on the relationship between family control and firms’ cost of debt. We find that family control is associated with a lower cost of debt on average, and a negative impact exists mainly in firms with relatively low corporate opacity. We further provide evidence that the moderating effect of corporate opacity becomes more pronounced when investors’ perception of controlling families’ moral hazard of expropriation is higher. Our results are robust to alternative opacity proxies and controlling for endogeneity of family control using the instrumental variable method. Our study highlights that controlling families are heterogeneous in their impact on the shareholder–debtholder relationship in family firms, and debtholders view corporate opacity as an important reference in assessing the extent of potential agency conflicts in China.     

Debt finance and the cost of management ownership: Some elementary results

Increased debt reduces a company's equity base, which reduces the dollar investment a manager must make to hold a given proportion of stock. Therefore, it is often argued, managers' effort incentives are improved by high leverage. This paper shows that while risky debt reduces the cost of providing managers with substantial equity ownership, the cheaper equity captures less of the fruits of the manager's effort. Managers' effort incentives are improved by high debt levels only under quite restrictive conditions. These conditions are more plausible when agency problems are due to a managerial propensity to expand size by investing in negative net present value projects. The results also imply that when debt is increased to reduce the agency costs of free cash flow, the accompanying covenants should allow for substantial cash distributions to shareholders even before bondholder claims are satisfied.