ILLIQUIDITY RISK,PROJECT CHARACTERISTICS,AND THE OPTIMAL MATURITY OF CORPORATE DEBT

I derive the optimal maturity period for corporate debt used to finance a specific project, when costly financial distress is triggered by the inability to meet coupon obligations. My model predicts a negative relation between bond risk and maturity, and it explains why high-grade bonds show greater maturity dispersion than low-grade bonds, as observed in U.S. corporate bond markets. The major determinant of bond maturity is project duration for low-risk bonds and project risk for high-risk bonds. Other determinants of bond maturity are debt burden, reorganization costs, corporate tax rate, interest rate, and project growth rate.     

利率市场化与利率改革的具体步骤

本文从分析利率市场化对于宏观经济调控和宏观金融改革的意义着手,利用实证分析和规范分析相结合的方法,借鉴国外的金融发展理论,分析了利率市场化和金融深化的关系、利率调整和经济增长的关系、利率调整和储蓄的关系,同时结合当前的宏观经济金融形势,指出了利率市场化与国有企业改革和商业银行改革之间的互动关系.作者认为,在现阶段应稳住存款利率,在一定程度放开贷款利率,由商业银行根据中央银行确定的存款利率、自身头寸、企业资信和项目风险状况进行贷款定价;同时采取措施促使国内利率市场化的条件不断完备,以完善一块放开一块的基本思路,最终实现金融国际和金融市场化.     

THE DEBT MATURITY CHOICE: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

In this paper I develop and test three nonmutually exclusive hypotheses about the determinants of corporations' debt maturity choices using a sample of corporate bonds issued between 1982 and 1986. The empirical evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that firms use bond maturity to facilitate monitoring by outsiders (the monitoring hypothesis) and weakly supports the hypothesis that firms with high-quality projects use bond maturity to signal project quality (the signaling hypothesis). The evidence does not support the hypothesis that firms use bond maturity to achieve an optimal trade-off between interest tax shields and bankruptcy costs (the tax/bankruptcy cost hypothesis).     

INTEREST RATE PARITY AND THE BEHAVIOR OF THE BID-ASK SPREAD

We use a stochastic frontier regression model to test interest rate parity (IRP) with bid- ask spreads for the Belgian franc, the Deutschmark, and the Swiss franc. The forward markets tested have become efficient in the sense that IRP holds well. The bounds provided by IRP do not appear to be binding, however. We provide evidence that in spite of the overall goodness of fit of the model, the arbitrage margins are sometimes violated, implying possible arbitrage opportunities. The percentage bid-ask spread is consistently higher for the Belgian franc than for the Deutschmark and the Swiss franc. Spreads are increasing functions of the time to maturity and volatility. Spread-size clustering is more severe than price-level clustering and appears to be inversely related to volatility and positively related to the trading volume. We find no evidence of significant calendar-day effects on spread size.