Short‐Term Debt as Bridge Financing: Evidence from the Commercial Paper Market

We analyze why firms use nonintermediated short‐term debt by studying the commercial paper (CP) market. Using a comprehensive database of CP issuers and issuance activity, we show that firms use CP to provide start‐up financing for capital investment. Firms’ CP issuance is driven by a desire to minimize transaction costs associated with raising capital for new investment. We show that firms with high rollover risk are less likely to enter the CP market, borrow less CP, and borrow more from bank credit lines. Further, CP is often refinanced with long‐term bond issuance to reduce rollover risk.     

Short‐Term Corporate Debt around the World

Short‐term corporate debt as a proportion of total debt issued by public firms varies greatly across countries, between 28% in the United States and 78% in China. This paper argues that the interaction between information asymmetry and legal protection of creditors is an important determinant of debt maturity. When short‐term debt plays a dual role as signaling and commitment devices, a reduction in information asymmetry has a larger impact on debt maturity when creditor rights are weaker. We find empirical support for this prediction using firm‐level data from 45 countries around the world.     

Liquidity or Credit Risk? The Determinants of Very Short‐Term Corporate Yield Spreads

Employing a comprehensive database on transactions of commercial paper issued by domestic U.S. nonfinancial corporations, we study the determinants of very short‐term corporate yield spreads. We find that liquidity plays a role in the determination of spreads but, somewhat surprisingly, credit quality is the more important determinant of spreads, even at horizons of less than 1 month. These results are robust across a variety of proxies for liquidity and credit risk, and have important implications for the literature on the modeling of corporate bond prices.     

The Cost of Short‐Selling Liquid Securities

Standard models of liquidity argue that the higher price for a liquid security reflects the future benefits that long investors expect to receive. We show that short‐sellers can also pay a net liquidity premium if their cost to borrow the security is higher than the price premium they collect from selling it. We provide a model‐free decomposition of the price premium for liquid securities into the net premiums paid by both long investors and short‐sellers. Empirically, we find that short‐sellers were responsible for a substantial fraction of the liquidity premium for on‐the‐run Treasuries from November 1995 through July 2009.     

Short‐Selling Bans Around the World: Evidence from the 2007–09 Crisis

Most regulators around the world reacted to the 2007–09 crisis by imposing bans on short selling. These were imposed and lifted at different dates in different countries, often targeted different sets of stocks, and featured varying degrees of stringency. We exploit this variation in short‐sales regimes to identify their effects on liquidity, price discovery, and stock prices. Using panel and matching techniques, we find that bans (i) were detrimental for liquidity, especially for stocks with small capitalization and no listed options; (ii) slowed price discovery, especially in bear markets, and (iii) failed to support prices, except possibly for U.S. financial stocks.     

Financial Reporting Quality,Debt Maturity,and the Cost of Debt: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the influence of different financing channels—bond issuance or bank loans—as well as debt maturity and the quality of financial reporting on the cost of debt in China. The authors find that conservative accounting is an important characteristic of high-quality financial reporting that can reduce the cost of longer maturity debt such as bank loans and bonds. Even state-owned enterprises, which have fewer financial constraints than non-state-owned enterprises, benefit from accounting conservatism's ability to reduce financial costs. Moreover, the findings indicate that bond investors are concerned about the issuer's fundamentals, while banks are more likely to focus on the operation and bankruptcy risk of borrowers.     

The Determinants of Long‐Term Corporate Debt Issuances

A significant proportion of the debt issued by investment‐grade firms has maturities greater than 20 years. In this paper we provide evidence that gap‐filling behavior is an important determinant of these very long‐term issues. Using data on individual corporate debt issues between 1987 and 2009, we find that gap‐filling behavior is more prominent in the very long end of the maturity spectrum where the required risk capital makes arbitrage costly. In addition, changes in the supply of long‐term government bonds affect not just the choice of maturity but also the overall level of corporate borrowing.     

Exploring the Agency Cost of Debt: Evidence from the ISS Governance Standards

Corporate governance is usually viewed in the context of strengthening shareholder rights and enhancing shareholders’ welfare. However, the impact of corporate governance on bondholders is much less understood. We explore how corporate governance influences the cost of debt financing. Using broad governance metrics encompassing fifty governance attributes reported by The Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we document that stronger corporate governance is associated with a higher cost of debt. As governance strengthens by one standard deviation, the cost of debt rises by as much as 11 %. The results are robust even after controlling for both firm-specific and issue-specific characteristics. Our results are important because they suggest that corporate governance has a palpable effect on critical corporate outcomes such as credit ratings and bond yields. More importantly, we show that, while corporate governance may mitigate the agency conflict between managers and shareholders, it appears to exacerbate the agency conflict between shareholders and bondholders (the agency cost of debt).     

Underwriting Syndicates and the Cost of Debt: Evidence from Chinese Corporate Bonds

This article examines the association between underwriting syndicates and the cost of debt based on a sample of Chinese corporate bonds during 2007–2013. We find strong evidence that there is a negative relationship between forming underwriting syndicates and the cost of debt. The cost of bonds is more likely to decrease when the syndicate has more members—specifically, more joint managers. Additionally, by measuring the information asymmetry using several methods, we observe that this negative relationship is more pronounced when the information asymmetry between issuers and bond investors is more serious. The above results are robust after controlling for the potential endogeneity by constructing instrumental variables based on the unique setting of China’s corporate bond market.     

Banks' Liquidity and the Cost of Liquidity to Corporations

We consider the liquidity shock banks experienced following the collapse of the asset‐backed commercial paper (ABCP) market in the fall of 2007 to investigate whether banks' liquidity conditions affect their ability to provide liquidity to corporations. We find that banks that borrowed more from the Federal Home Loan Bank system or the Federal Reserve's discount window following that liquidity shock passed a larger portion of their borrowing costs onto corporations seeking access to liquidity when compared to the precrisis period. This increase is larger among banks with a bigger exposure to the ABCP market, credit lines that pose more liquidity risk to banks, and borrowers that are likely dependent on the credit‐line provider. Our findings show that the crisis that affected the banking system had a negative effect not only on the price of credit to corporations, but also on the price corporations pay to guarantee access to liquidity.     

Liquidity and Pricing of Credit Default Swaps in Japan: Evidence from a Benchmark Index for Corporate Debt Claims

This article is a contribution towards the growing empirical literature on the relationship between liquidity and pricing of credit default swaps (CDSs). To the best of my knowledge, the article becomes the first to show that market liquidity does matter to CDS pricing in Japan, by looking into a sole benchmark index of CDS trading for investment-grade debt claims, or the Markit iTraxx Japan (MiJ). The impact of illiquidity on MiJ premia has declined since the International Swaps and Derivatives Association introduced new trade practices in April 2009. The liquidity of the MiJ has increased since the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation started operating as a central counterpart for the MiJ in July 2011. The price discovery ability of the MiJ has also increased since then.     

The Real Effects of Government‐Owned Banks: Evidence from an Emerging Market

Using plant‐level data for Brazilian manufacturing firms, this paper provides evidence that government control over banks leads to significant political influence over the real decisions of firms. I find that firms eligible for government bank lending expand employment in politically attractive regions near elections. These expansions are associated with additional (favorable) borrowing from government banks. Further, these persistent expansions take place just before competitive elections, and are associated with lower future employment growth by firms in other regions. The analysis suggests that politicians in Brazil use bank lending to shift employment towards politically attractive regions and away from unattractive regions.     

论中央银行视角下的微观流动性管理

随着金融市场的快速发展,中央银行的流动性管理越来越多地通过金融市场的平台来进行。金融机构作为金融市场的主要参与者,其流动性管理模式应当纳入中央银行的考察视野。为此,本文从宏观与微观流动性的基本定义出发,分析了中央银行宏观流动性管理与金融机构微观流动性管理的内涵与联系,以及中央银行关注微观流动性管理的必要性。最后,本文就如何关注微观流动性管理问题提出了几点建议。     

Does the Liquidity of a Debt Issue Increase with Its Size? Evidence from the Corporate Bond and Medium-Term Note Markets

To investigate the liquidity of large issues, this study tests for yield differences between corporate bonds and medium-term notes (MTNs). In the sample, MTNs have an average issue size of $4 million, compared with $265 million for bonds. Among MTNs that have the same issuance date, the same maturity date, and the same corporate issuer, we find no relation between size and yields. Moreover, bonds and MTNs have statistically equivalent yields. Thus, rather than suggesting that large issues have greater liquidity, these findings indicate that large and small securities issued by the same borrower are close substitutes.     

机构投资者持股与流动性成本——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

现有的研究认为,机构投资者通过两个渠道影响流动性成本:逆向选择和信息效率。一方面,因信息不对称而带来的逆向选择问题会增大流动性成本;另一方面,机构投资者通过股票交易使私有信息渗透到股价之中,则会提高信息效率,减少流动性成本。因此,机构投资者与流动性成本之间的关系成为一个实证问题。本文研究发现,我国机构投资者持股增加了报价价差、有效价差和PIN值;进一步地,证券投资基金持股比其他机构投资者持股更可能导致流动性成本的增加。因此,我们认为,监管层应严厉打击机构投资者获取内幕信息,加强上市公司信息披露监管,减少逆向选择问题,同时应减少机构投资者操纵股票市场等影响股价信息效率的行为。     

Corporate Pyramids,Conservatism and Cost of Debt: Evidence From Taiwan

This study investigates the extent to which the span of corporate pyramids (as measured by the number of ownership layers) is associated with higher agency costs of debt, and whether conservatism can moderate the agency cost. Consistent with corporate pyramids generating higher agency costs and information asymmetries between corporate insiders and outside creditors, we find a positive association between the number of investment layers and cost of debt. However, we also find that multi-layered firms mitigate organizational opaqueness through increased financial reporting conservatism, which results in lower cost of debt capital. These findings provide new insights into the relationship between organizational structure and financial reporting quality.     

Access to Collateral and Corporate Debt Structure: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We investigate how firms respond to strengthening of creditor rights by examining their financial decisions following a securitization reform in India. We find that the reform led to a reduction in secured debt, total debt, debt maturity, and asset growth, and an increase in liquidity hoarding by firms. Moreover, the effects are more pronounced for firms that have a higher proportion of tangible assets because these firms are more affected by the secured transactions law. These results suggest that strengthening of creditor rights introduces a liquidation bias and documents how firms alter their debt structures to contract around it.     

Long‐Term Evidence on the Effect of Aggregate Earnings on Prices

We examine the time‐series properties and determinants of the relation between aggregate earnings information and stock prices (aggregate earnings response coefficient or AERC) employing return decompositions with data since 1871. We confirm that AERC is negative even though firms respond positively to individual firm earnings information, but we also find that AERC is time varying. Furthermore, we show that AERC components based on expected earnings, cash flows, and discount rates are also time varying and differ in relative importance.     

Funding liquidity shocks in a quasi-experiment: Evidence from the CDS Big Bang

We use the advent of new credit default swap (CDS) trading conventions in April 2009—the CDS Big Bang—to study how a shock to funding liquidity impacts market liquidity. After the Big Bang, traders are required to pay upfront fees to execute CDS transactions, with the size of the fees depending on the level of CDS spreads. While CDS bid-ask spreads decline in aggregate after the Big Bang, they do so less for contracts that require larger fees. Furthermore, the funding effect is stronger for smaller and riskier firms and for noncentrally cleared contracts. The effect also becomes stronger after Deutsche Bank's exit.     

Household Response to Government Debt: Evidence from Life Insurance Holdings

We use state‐level panel data on life insurance in force in the United States and find that a $1 increase in government debt, at either the state or federal level is associated with a $0.96 increase in the face value of the average life insurance holdings per capita for a household in the average state. This increase represents an intention to save that would almost completely offset the government debt in specific states of the world (i.e., if the insured dies). Because this state of the world is rare, the immediate increase in actual savings is only about $0.03, the cost of the additional insurance. We find, in addition, that this response occurs mainly on the intensive margin, meaning that the size of the average life insurance policy increases when government debt increases. Along the extensive margin, we find the number of policies in force falls slightly with federal debt, and rises slightly with state debt increases. The results show altruistic planning in response to changes in government debt that are consistent with Ricardian Equivalence and the long‐run neutrality of government debt.