Development costs capitalization and debt financing

This study investigates debt market effects of research and development (R&D) costs capitalization, using a global sample of public bonds and private syndicated loans issued by public non‐financial firms. Firstly, we show that firms capitalize larger amounts of R&D in a year when they exhibit a propensity for issuing bonds, rather than borrowing funds privately from the syndicated loan market, in the subsequent year. Secondly, we provide evidence that capitalized R&D investments reduce the cost of debt. We infer that debt market participants are able to identify firms’ motives for R&D capitalization, as we find a reduction in the cost of debt only for those firms that do not show indications of employing R&D capitalization for earnings management reasons. Indeed, only for this sub‐sample of firms, the amount of capitalized R&D contributes positively to future earnings. We confirm that R&D capitalization is positively associated with audit fees and thus can be deemed to be a signaling device. Lastly, we find that it is the amount of R&D a firm is expected to capitalize and not the discretionary counterparts, which facilitates a firm's access to public debt markets, reduces bond and syndicated loan prices, and contributes to future benefits.     

基于融资行为的中小企业社会信任网络构建

中小企业社会信任网络的多层次性与其融资的可获得性有着密切的关系。通过社会信任网络解决中小企业内生资源不足问题，利用网络内含的默契、惯例、信任以及惩罚机制，构建以融资效率为核心的中小企业社会信任网络，有助于改善中小企业融资环境，消除中小企业融资障碍，提高中小企业融资效率。     

Financing Technological Innovation: Evidence from Patent-Intensive Firms

ABSTRACT

Equityholders of firms with high debt loads have an incentive to underinvest, a distortion that can be most costly for firms with attractive growth options. Using a novel patent-based measure of a firm's growth options, we find that firms issue more equity and shy away from debt financing when they have larger investment opportunities sets. The results are more pronounced among firms in patent-intensive industries. The findings suggest the existence of conflicts of interest between debtholders and equityholders. Our results are consistent with the use of conservative debt policies by technology-intensive firms to mitigate the debt overhang associated with their future growth options.     

The impact of fiscal positions on government bond yields in CEE countries

This paper investigates the influence of government debt and primary balance on long-term government bond yields in 10 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in the period 2000–2013. The results indicate that a one percentage point increase in the stock of government debt is associated with an increase in government bond yields of 2.7–4 basis points, while a one percentage point increase in the primary deficit to GDP ratio is associated with an increase in government bond yields of 12.9–24.3 basis points. We also find evidence of non-linearities in the debt-interest rate relationship, whereby the threshold after which the impact of debt turns from negative to positive is significantly lower than in advanced economies.     

Finite lifetimes,long-term debt and the fiscal limit

The U.S. faces exponentially rising entitlement obligations. I introduce a fiscal limit—a point where higher taxes are no longer a feasible financing mechanism—into a Perpetual Youth model to examine how intergenerational redistributions of wealth, the average duration of government debt, and entitlement reform impact the consequences of explosive government transfers. Three key findings emerge: (1) Growing government transfers cause more severe and more persistent stagflation than in representative agent models that do not capture intergenerational transfers of wealth; (2) A longer average duration of government debt pushes the financing of government liabilities into the future and reduces the short-run impacts of explosive transfers; (3) The time it takes the economy to rebound from a period of growing transfers increases exponentially with the number of years it takes to pass entitlement reform.     

金融中介职能、会计质量与债券违约风险——海龙短期融资券案例分析

利用案例分析方法分析了短期融资券"11海龙CP01"的发行和兑付过程,发现债券发行公司在发行债券前后均存在会计质量、公司运营以及内部治理等方面的问题,包括评级公司、承销商和会计师事务所在内的金融中介机构并未对这些问题及时披露,而这不利于信用风险市场化体系的建立,阻碍了债券市场的长期健康发展。     

利率管制松绑、企业会计信息披露质量与融资约束

已有研究发现,以资本价格——利率为代表的要素市场改革会对企业行为产生重要影响,但这种影响的作用机理如何通过改变资本市场中的信息供求关系予以实现,亟待深入研究。为此,本文以我国2013年央行全面放开利率管制为背景,基于产权性质差异构建双重差分模型,检验利率管制松绑在企业层面的信息溢出效应。研究发现:央行全面放开利率管制不仅有助于促进企业披露高质量的会计信息,还能够缓解企业的融资约束,且企业信息披露质量的提升是导致利率管制松绑降低融资约束的重要渠道。进一步研究发现,对于市场化程度较低地区、R&D投入较高以及短期贷款占比较大的公司,上述信息溢出效应更加显著;另外,利率管制松绑后企业披露高质量的会计信息能够增进投资者的信任,提高信息披露的价值相关性。以上研究结论表明,为应对利率市场化改革带来的机遇与挑战,保障可持续发展,企业会选择主动优化信息环境,来消除信贷市场摩擦,解决“融资难”问题。     

Corporate commitment to climate change action,carbon risk exposure,and a firm's debt financing policy

Motivated by the rising consensus that corporate engagement in climate change actions holds the key for society's transition into environmentally resilient economy, the study examines whether a firm's commitment to climate change action and its carbon risk exposure shape the firm's debt financing policy. Based on insights drawn from signaling, corporate reputation, and agency theories, we develop models that link corporate commitment to climate change actions and a firm's carbon risk exposure with its debt financing decisions. Using data drawn from S&P 500 companies, for years 2015 to 2019, we find a robust evidence that firms that engage in higher levels of commitment to climate change actions issue a higher proportion of debt with longer terms to maturity, even after controlling for their carbon risk exposure. However, we do not find a robust evidence corroborating an association between firms' carbon risk exposure and their debt financing policy. These findings are consistent with arguments that high-commitment firms enjoy positive reputation, better credit rating, and reduced agency and information asymmetry costs, allowing them to gain easier access to long-term debt markets.     

Was the expansion of housing credit in Japan good or bad?

This paper shows, using data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey, that housing credit has become increasingly available over time in Japan, especially since 2000, and that this has made it easier for Japanese households to purchase housing and enabled them to do so at an earlier age. However, it also shows that the greater availability of housing credit has increased households’ housing loan repayment burden, which has resulted in their cutting back on their other consumption expenditures and created the potential for retirement insecurity. Another concern is that the increasing availability of housing credit has been accompanied by a pronounced shift from fixed-rate to variable-rate housing loans. This is cause for concern given the low level of financial literacy that prevails among the Japanese population and the likelihood that interest rates on variable-rate housing loans will be raised sooner or later as monetary policy is tightened.     

Profit shifting and tax-rate uncertainty

Using firm-level data for 1,084 parent firms in 24 countries and for 9,497 subsidiaries in 54 countries, we show that tax-motivated profit shifting is larger among subsidiaries in countries that have stable corporate tax rates over time. Our findings further suggest that firms move away from transfer pricing and toward intragroup debt shifting that has lower adjustment costs. Our results are robust to several identification methods and respecifications, and they highlight the important role of tax-rate uncertainty in the profit-shifting decision while pointing to an adjustment away from more costly transfer pricing and toward debt shifting.