The Leverage Ratchet Effect

Firms’ inability to commit to future funding choices has profound consequences for capital structure dynamics. With debt in place, shareholders pervasively resist leverage reductions no matter how much such reductions may enhance firm value. Shareholders would instead choose to increase leverage even if the new debt is junior and would reduce firm value. These asymmetric forces in leverage adjustments, which we call the leverage ratchet effect, cause equilibrium leverage outcomes to be history‐dependent. If forced to reduce leverage, shareholders are biased toward selling assets relative to potentially more efficient alternatives such as pure recapitalizations.     

Leverage

In his 1990 Nobel Prize address, the "father of modern finance" begins by discussing the benefits of debt financing and hen goes on to discuss potential costs. Although certainly capable of excesses, private capital markets have self-correcting mechanisms that limit corporate "overleveraging." Contrary to popular perception, corporate leveraging does not increase risk for the economy as a whole, and the financial difficulties of highly leveraged companies involve "mainly private, not social costs." (And provided the Chapter 11 process doesn't get in the way, debt often plays the socially constructive role of eliminating excess capacity.) Finally, regulations designed to reinforce capital markets' built-in controls against overleveraging are generally not only unnecessary but positively harmful to the economy.     

Leverage

Nobel Memorial Prize Lecture for presentation at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, December 7, 1990. Helpful comments on an earlier draft were made by my colleagues Steven Kaplan and Robert Vishny.     

European Managerial Perceptions of the Net Benefits of Foreign Stock Listings

This study surveys the European managers on the costs, benefits, and net benefits of foreign listing. Increase in prestige and visibility, and growth in shareholders are perceived as the major benefits, and the costs of public relations and legal fees are cited as the major costs by the managers. While a majority of managers (60%) perceive that benefits outweigh the costs of foreign listing, about 30% also view the net benefits to be negative. Perceived net benefits are positively related to the increase in the total trading volume after foreign listing, the financial disclosure levels of the firm, and the dual listing on both the US and European foreign exchanges. Without the influence of these factors, the perceived net benefits are negative.     

The Puzzle of Financial Leverage Clienteles

Empirically, it appears that common stock of publicly traded corporations with high-debt ratios tends to be held by investors with relatively low marginal taxes while the stock in companies with little debt is held by investors in high-tax brackets. A number of authors have argued that in an equilibrium similar to the one described by Miller [8], these clienteles should exist. We argue that standard portfolio theory does not imply financial leverage clienteles for publicly traded firms. We explain the empirical relationship between investor tax rates and leverage ratios by the existence of dividend clienteles and a positive relationship between dividend yield and leverage ratios.     

The Disciplining Role of Leverage in Dutch Firms

In this study we investigate the role of leverage indisciplining overinvestment problems. We measure the relationships between leverage, Tobin's qand corporate governance characteristics for Dutch listed firms. Besides, ourempirical analysis tests for determinants of leverage from tax and bankruptcy theories. Representinggrowth opportunities, q is expected to be an agency-based determinant of leverage.Simultaneously, q represents firm value, which is determined by leverage and governancestructures. We test a structural equations model in which we deal with this simultaneousnature of the relation between leverage and q. Our results indicate that Dutch managersavoid the disciplining role of debt, when they are most likely to overinvest. Leverage is mainlydetermined by tax advantages and bankruptcy costs. In addition, we test the impact ofleverage on excess investment. We do not find a difference in the influence of leverage oninvestment between potential overinvestors and other firms. This confirms that the disciplinary roleof leverage in Dutch firms is absent.     

合理使用金融杠杆与财政杠杆促进社会经济协调发展

由于传统计划经济体制的影,我国经济发展过程中金融代行财政职能.出现了诸多问题.财政杠杆与金融杠杆如何有效地配合使用,是今后经济发展中必须解决的问题.二者如果配合适当,就会促进社会经济的协调发展.     

财务杠杆在房地产业的应用

我国房地产企业是典型的资金密集型和高资产负债率企业。鉴于房地产业在国民经济中的重要地位,其上市公司的财务健康与否也必然是备受市场各利益主体的关注。目前,由于多轮宏观调控政策的影响,财务风险隐患己成为国内很多房地产公司生存发展所迫切需要解决的问题。因此房地产企业在快速增长过程中,如何合理利用财务杠杆增加企业收益,同时保持适宜的负债率以降低资本成本,减少财务风险确保企业的可持续增长为众多房地产企业所面临的重要问题。     

The Effect Of International Acquisitions on Firm Leverage

To determine whether corporate international diversification leads firms to increase their leverage, we perform an event study that compares the leverage of corporations before and after they acquire foreign subsidiaries. We find that on average leverage increases from the first to the third year following the acquisition. When we examine the relation between additional debt financing after foreign acquisitions and the characteristics of these acquisitions, we find that in addition to such major determinants as size and profitability, debt financing is explained by geographical and industrial diversification effects.     

Trader Leverage and Liquidity

Does trader leverage drive equity market liquidity? We use the unique features of the margin trading system in India to identify a causal relationship between traders’ ability to borrow and a stock's market liquidity. To quantify the impact of trader leverage, we employ a regression discontinuity design that exploits threshold rules that determine a stock's margin trading eligibility. We find that liquidity is higher when stocks become eligible for margin trading and that this liquidity enhancement is driven by margin traders’ contrarian strategies. Consistent with downward liquidity spirals due to deleveraging, we also find that this effect reverses during crises.     

杠杆化与系统性风险的监管反思

企业、居民、金融机构和中央银行的经济行为改变着自身的资产负债情况,主动或被动地影响着彼此的杠杆程度。金融体系过度杠杆具有增加脆弱性、放大复杂性、顺周期等特点,直接引致系统性风险增加。与此同时,由于企业、居民、金融机构和中央银行的资产负债表相互关联,金融体系杠杆程度加深,意味着与之相联的经济部门关联度扩大,内在依赖性增强,从而进一步放大系统性风险。危机爆发后,为帮助降低金融机构杠杆程度,美联储运用多种创新工具,快速膨胀了自身资产负债规模,前所未有地增加了自身杠杆程度,形成新的系统性风险隐患。有鉴于此,我们应协调宏观经济政策和宏观审慎监管政策,引导虚拟经济与实体经济相互平衡,确保各经济部门负债和杠杆水平维持在健康、合理的区间。     

Proactive Leverage Increases and The Value of Financial Flexibility

Traditional tradeoff models of corporate capital structure, although still featured prominently in finance textbooks and widely accepted by practitioners, have been criticized by financial economists for doing a poor job of explaining observed debt ratios. Moreover, the observed ratios are far less stable than what would be predicted by the standard tradeoff models. In a study published several years ago in the Review of Financial Studies, the authors of this article aimed to shed more light on the underlying forces governing capital structure decisions by analyzing a set of major changes in capital structure in which companies initiated large increases in leverage through substantial new borrowings. They then attempted to explain why these companies chose to increase leverage and how their capital structures changed during the years after the large debt issues. As summarized in this article, the authors' findings indicate, first of all, that the large debt financings were used primarily to fund major corporate investments—and not, for example, to make large distributions to shareholders. And the changes in leverage ratios that came after the debt offerings were driven far more by the evolution of the companies' realized cash flows and their investment opportunities than by deliberate or decisive attempts to rebalance their capital structures toward a stationary target. In fact, many of the companies chose to take on even more debt when faced with cash‐flow deficits, despite operating with leverage that was already well above any reasonable estimate of their estimated target leverage. At the same time, companies that generated financial surpluses used them to reduce debt, even when their leverage had fallen well below their estimated targets. Taken as a whole, the findings of the authors' study support the idea that unused debt capacity represents an important source of financial flexibility, and that preserving such flexibility—and making use of it when valuable investment opportunities materialize—may well be the critical missing link in connecting capital structure theory with observed corporate behavior.     

经营负债杠杆与金融负债杠杆效应的差异性检验

本文将企业的负债划分为经营负债与金融负债,以2001—2005年期间沪深两市A股上市公司为样本,比较检验了经营负债杠杆与金融负债杠杆对公司创值能力和成长性影响的差异性。结果发现:①经营负债杠杆比金融负债杠杆对公司的创值能力和成长性产生更大更显著的积极效应,即拥有更多的经营负债更能提升公司的创值能力和成长性;②两种负债的杠杆效应均存在"规模效应",即公司的规模越小,杠杆效应越强;③金融负债杠杆与经营负债杠杆具有显著的互补性,即随着金融负债杠杆比率的增加,经营负债杠杆效应会显著增强;反之亦然。显然,本文的研究结论对企业制定其负债安排策略具有一定的启示意义。     

论项目管理对投资效益的支持作用

投资活动具有独特的运行规律，政府和企业在管理模式上现存的缺陷不利于投资效益的实现，有必要在实际 工作中引入项目管理的模式，项目管理以效益为直接目标，以项目为核心，以竞争为手段，以协调为基础，以法律为保障，辅以现代化的项目管理方法和技术，为投资效益的实现铺垫了良好的基础，具有坚实的支撑作用。     

Credit Traps and Macroprudential Leverage

We construct a macroeconomic model with overlapping generations to study credit traps—prolonged periods of stagnant real activity accompanied by low productivity, financial sector undercapitalization, and credit misallocation. Shocks to bank capital tighten banks' borrowing constraints causing them to allocate credit to easily collateralizable but low productivity projects. Low productivity weakens bank capital generation, reinforcing tight borrowing constraints, sustaining the credit trap steady state. Macroprudential policy to limit bank leverage can be welfare enhancing. In the presence of a credit trap, optimal leverage policy is countercyclical.     

Optimal Leverage and Aggregate Investment

We analyze the optimal financing of investment projects when managers must exert unobservable effort and can also switch to less profitable riskier ventures. Optimal financial contracts can be implemented by a combination of debt and equity when the risk-shifting problem is the most severe while stock options are also needed when the effort problem is the most severe. Worsening of the moral hazard problems leads to decreases in investment and output at the macroeconomic level. Moreover, aggregate leverage decreases with the risk-shifting problem and increases with the effort problem.     

超额资本结构与股票收益

利用一个被解释变量为实际资本结构的线性回归模型来估计超额资本结构,线性回归模型的残差被定义为超额资本结构.研究发现,超额资本结构和股票收益成正关系.投资者未能认识到超额资本结构中的有关未来投资支出的信息,这使得投资者对股票给予错误的定价.投资者可以利用超额资本结构建立投资策略并取得正投资收益.     

碳金融:撬动低碳经济的杠杆

金融业要支持低碳经济,发展碳金融是必经之路。碳金融交易市场日益成为低碳经济制高点。中国碳金融具有巨大的市场空间,本文针对碳金融市场发展提出如下建议:积极制定碳金融发展的战略规划;健全碳金融监管和法律框架,规范碳金融发展;培育碳金融创新机制,创新和发展多样化的碳金融工具;完善碳金融中介服务,促进碳金融开展;构建交易平台,统一碳金融市场;积极推动碳交易人民币计价的国际化进程。     

利率:变软的杠杆

在过去的15年中,世界经济舞台上有一个相貌平平的秃顶老头儿,他有力地撬动着利率杠杆,机智地规避了所有风险,使美国经济在长时间增长的轨道上稳定地运行,这个人就是美国联邦储备委员会主席艾伦·格林斯潘.然而今天,格林斯潘手中的杠杆仿佛正在变软--人们甚至开始质疑它的作用.