Investment and liquidation in renegotiation-proof contracts with moral hazard

In a long-term contract with moral hazard, the liquidation of the firm can arise as the outcome of the optimal contract. However, if the future production capability or market opportunities remain unchanged, liquidation may not be free from renegotiation. Will the firm ever be liquidated if we allow for renegotiation? This paper shows that the firm can still be liquidated even though liquidation is not free from renegotiation in the long-term contract. In addition to liquidation, the renegotiation-proof contract generates important features of the investment behavior and dynamics of firms observed in the data.     

Optimal information transmission in a holdup problem

This article examines the optimal contract in a bilateral trade model with unobservable relationship‐specific investment and renegotiation. In such a setting, a contract plays an additional role that it does not have in the standard holdup model, namely that of transmitting information between the parties. The article shows that a partial‐disclosure contract may be optimal and describes the optimal contract. If the investment is cooperative and the information between the trading parties is asymmetric, the optimal contract generally cannot result in the first best, but dispensing with either of these assumptions makes the first‐best achievable.     

Renegotiation and the impossibility of optimal investment

In a model with asymmetric information and external equity financingit is impossible to achieve socially optimal investment becauseof renegotiation possibilities. The contractual solution suggestedby Dybvig and Zender (1991) is not dynamically consistent -the manager's contract would be renegotiated, resulting in inefficientinvestment. Moreover, no other compensation contract that wouldinduce the manager to invest efficiently survives renegotiation.Contracts that pay the manager based on the stock price, whileproducing suboptimal investment as in Myers and Majluf (1984),are robust to renegotiation.     

Sovereign debt and the London Club: A precommitment device for limiting punishment for default

In this paper, we examine the role that institutions may play in enabling banks to write contracts whereby sovereign debt is not forgiven ex post. Our model provides a rationale for the emergence of a centralized forum for debt renegotiation, such as the London Club, as well as for bank syndicates. These bank syndicates arise as part of a pre-commitment device rather than for risk sharing purposes. We propose a debt contract under which only involuntary default is forgiven ex post. Our main findings are that under this contract, debt forgiveness after voluntary (strategic) default is avoided. When voluntary default occurs, access to the credit market is denied only for a limited number of periods, rather than forever. In contrast to a voluntary default, involuntary default is forgiven immediately.     

Corporate fraud and investment distortions in efficient capital markets

Inefficient investment allocation induced by corporate fraud, where informed insiders strategically manipulate outside investors' beliefs, has been endemic historically and has recently attracted much attention. We reconcile corporate fraud and investment distortions with efficient capital markets, building on shareholder‐manager agency conflicts and investment renegotiation in active takeover markets. Because investments that are ex post inefficient are not renegotiation proof, the optimal renegotiation‐proof contract induces overstatements by managers, accompanied by overinvestment in low return states and underinvestment in high return states by rational investors. Our framework also helps explain why easy access to external capital appears to facilitate corporate fraud.     

Sovereign Debt: Optimal Contract,Underinvestment, and Forgiveness

In this paper we develop a time consistent rational expectations model which analyzes the equilibrium loan contract between a borrowing country and a foreign bank. The loan contract specifies both the amount of the loan and the promised interest payments, and rationally reflects the investment decisions of the country and the possibilities of renegotiation and repudiation of the debt. An important feature of the model is that at the initial negotiation of the loan there is uncertainty about whether the country will renegotiate for partial forgiveness in the future, and whether it will eventually repudiate the debt, even having successfully renegotiated. Moreover, the probabilities of renegotiation and repudiation, and the amount of possible forgiveness are endogenously determined. In the model the repudiation decision is directly related to the underinvestment problem; the objective of the renegotiation is precisely to alleviate this problem. The model is used to analyze the effects of four variables on both the optimal contract and the country's welfare: the degree of penalties that a bank can impose on a defaulting country, the uncertainty of production, the productivity of investments and the riskless interest rate. The analysis has policy implications as well as testable predictions.     

On the design of optimal health insurance contracts under ex post moral hazard

We analyze the design of optimal medical insurance under ex post moral hazard, i.e., when illness severity cannot be observed by insurers and policyholders decide for themselves on their health expenditures. The trade-off between ex ante risk sharing and ex post incentive compatibility is analyzed in an optimal revelation mechanism under hidden information and risk aversion. The optimal contract provides partial insurance at the margin, with a deductible when insurers’ rates are affected by a positive loading, and it may also include an upper limit on coverage. The potential to audit the health state leads to an upper limit on out-of-pocket expenses.     

公共服务合同外包中的交易成本及其控制

公共服务合同外包作为一项交易,不可避免地存在不少交易成本变量,公共服务合同外包不一定能降低交易成本、公共服务合同外包中存在不确定性成本、公共服务合同外包难以合理界定交易成本等都是这些变量的体现。基于这些交易成本变量,大胆而细致地选择公共服务合同外包,建立公共服务合同外包风险防范机制,建立较为公平、合理的风险分担机制,提高政府对公共服务合同外包的控制能力等应是降低公共服务合同外包交易成本的可行路径。     

How legal and institutional environments shape the private debt renegotiation process?

I investigate how legal and institutional conditions around loan origination influence a private debt renegotiation process. Using a large sample of 15,000 loans on the European credit market, I apply a sequential logit model to consider the renegotiation likelihood, the conditional probability of multiple renegotiation rounds or multiple amended terms, and the renegotiation outcomes conditional on specific loan amendments. I find that legal systems with stronger protection of creditors control rights have a positive influence on renegotiation likelihood and favorable outcomes on amendments to amount or maturity. Stronger legal protection reduces renegotiation likelihood when creditors face potential strategic default by shareholders. The legal and institutional environment has a significant effect on how the initial design of the financial contract impacts the renegotiation process.     

Winners and losers in tolled motorway renegotiations: an empirical evaluation of the Spanish pioneers

This paper evaluates the welfare impact of a tolled motorway contract renegotiation in Spain. The results show that, after renegotiation, both taxpayers and the private concessionaire were better off. However, road users lost out. An agreement leaving road users unaffected, while securing gains for taxpayers and the concessionaire, would have been possible by negotiating a larger reduction in tolls linked to the extension of the contract duration.     

Incentive problems and the pattern of international risk sharing

This paper analyzes the implications of moral hazard and a lack of contract enforcement for risk sharing across countries and regions. We demonstrate that both incentive problems can considerably restrict efficient risk sharing. However, we show that the cross-sectional risk sharing component is much more affected than the intertemporal component. We argue that this may help to explain several stylized facts of international risk sharing, such as the low degree of insurance against permanent shocks.     

Liars Never Prosper? How Management Misrepresentation Reduces Monitoring Costs

When monitoring is not contractible—so investors monitor only when, at that time, they expect to benefit from doing so—efficient contracts sometimes induce managers to makefalsereports to investors. Because of monitoring discretion, management misrepresentation can produce Pareto improvements by reducing monitoring costs. When costs of renegotiation are small, optimal contracts necessarily induce misrepresentation. Discretionary monitoring also generates an equilibrium role for multiple-security capital structures. When an optimal contract has two investors, securityholder conflict arises endogenously as a means of reducing monitoring costs. It is efficient to write the contract so that one investor's decision to monitor hurts the other investor.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: G32.     

Renegotiation of financial contracts: Evidence from private credit agreements

Using a large sample of private credit agreements between U.S. publicly traded firms and financial institutions, we show that over 90% of long-term debt contracts are renegotiated prior to their stated maturity. Renegotiations result in large changes to the amount, maturity, and pricing of the contract, occur relatively early in the life of the contract, and are rarely a consequence of distress or default. The accrual of new information concerning the credit quality, investment opportunities, and collateral of the borrower, as well as macroeconomic fluctuations in credit and equity market conditions, are the primary determinants of renegotiation and its outcomes. The terms of the initial contract (e.g., contingencies) also play an important role in renegotiations; by altering the structure of the contract in a state contingent manner, renegotiation is partially controlled by the contractual assignment of bargaining power.     

The design of bank loan contracts

The unique characteristics of bank loans emerge endogenouslyto enhance efficiency in a model of renegotiation between aborrower and a lender in which there is the potential for moralhazard on each side of the relationship. Firm risk is endogenousand renegotiated interest rates on the debt need not be monotonein firm risk. The initial terms of the debt are not set to pricedefault risk but rather are set to efficiently balance bargainingpower in later renegotiation. Loan pricing may be nonlinear,involving initial transfers either from the borrower to thebank or from the bank to the borrower.     

An economic rationale for the pricing structure of bank loan commitments

An economic rationale is provided for the competitive equilibrium deployment of commitment and usage fees in loan commitment pricing. It is shown that, under perfect information, assessing both fees rather than just one permits optimal risk sharing. When the borrower is privately informed about its probability of future commitment utilization, commitment and usage fees can be used to induce borrowers to identify themselves by self-selection through contract choice. The equilibrium characterized here is dissipative and thus raises the usual existence questions which are addressed in the paper.     

Capital Versus Performance Covenants in Debt Contracts

Building on contract theory, we argue that financial covenants control the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers via two different mechanisms. Capital covenants control agency problems by aligning debt holder–shareholder interests. Performance covenants serve as trip wires that limit agency problems via the transfer of control to lenders in states where the value of their claim is at risk. Companies trade off these mechanisms. Capital covenants impose costly restrictions on the capital structure, while performance covenants require contractible accounting information to be available. Consistent with these arguments, we find that the use of performance covenants relative to capital covenants is positively associated with (1) the financial constraints of the borrower, (2) the extent to which accounting information portrays credit risk, (3) the likelihood of contract renegotiation, and (4) the presence of contractual restrictions on managerial actions. Our findings suggest that accounting‐based covenants can improve contracting efficiency in two different ways.     

On the Value of Transparency in Agencies with Renegotiation

In this paper we study when it is advantageous to improve corporate transparency by allowing shareholders direct access to corporate information and when it is preferable to rely on a reporting system in which shareholders only gain access to information that management chooses to disclose. We show that in an agency model that allows for contract renegotiation, the desirability of a fully transparent reporting regime hinges on the stewardship properties of the information in question. Specifically, information that is mainly useful for predicting future events and of little use for evaluating past actions should only be made available to the public through management's self‐interested disclosures. Only if the information is useful for making inference about managerial actions can it be optimal to have full corporate transparency, so that outsiders have independent access to the same information as management.     

Optimal Insurance Under Random Auditing

We provide a characterization of an optimal insurance contract (coverage schedule and audit policy) when the monitoring procedure is random. When the policyholder exhibits constant absolute risk aversion, the optimal contract involves a positive indemnity payment with a deductible when the magnitude of damages exceeds a threshold. In such a case, marginal damages are fully covered if the claim is verified. Otherwise, there is an additional deductible that disappears when the damages become infinitely large. Under decreasing absolute risk aversion, providing a positive indemnity payment for small claims with a nonmonotonic coverage schedule may be optimal.     

The Design of an Optimal Area Yield Crop Insurance Contract

This article focuses on the design of a crop insurance contract when the indemnity is based on the aggregate yield of a surrounding geographical area. Coinsurance under a critical yield often provides an efficient sharing of systemic risk. Under a linear relationship between individual yield and aggregate yield, the optimal form depends on the individual beta coefficient, which measures the sensitivity of individual yield to aggregate yield. The optimal hedging position of the producer on the yield options market is to buy put options or call options depending upon whether his beta coefficient is positive or negative.     

Optimal pension insurance design

In this paper we analyze how the traditional life and pension contracts with a guaranteed rate of return can be optimized to increase customers’ welfare. Given that the contracts have to be priced correctly, we use individuals’ preferences to find the preferred design. Assuming CRRA utility, we cannot explain the existence of any form of guarantees. Through numerical solutions we quantify the difference (measured in certainty equivalents) to the preferred Merton solution of direct investments in a fixed proportion of risky and risk free assets. The largest welfare loss seems to come from the fact that guarantees are effective by the end of each year, not only by the expiry of the contract. However, the demand for products with guarantees may be explained through behavioral models. We use cumulative prospect theory as an example, showing that the optimal design is a simple contract with a life-time guarantee and no default option.