The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism

Dynamic panel models play a natural role in several important areas of corporate finance, but the combination of fixed effects and lagged dependent variables introduces serious econometric bias. Several methods of counteracting these biases are available and these methodologies have been tested on small datasets with independent, normally-distributed explanatory variables. However, no one has evaluated the methods’ performance with corporate finance data, in which the dependent variable may be clustered or censored and independent variables may be missing, correlated with one another, or endogenous. We find that the data’s properties substantially affect the estimators’ performances. We provide evidence about the impact of various data set characteristics on the estimators, so that researchers can determine the best approach for their datasets.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1880003_code457196.pdf?abstractid=1108684&rulid=228672&mirid=2

Estimating Dynamic Panel Models in Corporate Finance

Estimating dynamic panel models in corporate finance

Does policy uncertainty affect mergers and acquisitions

I estimate the market's valuation of the net benefits to leverage using panel data from 1994 to 2004, identified from market values and betas of a company's debt and equity. The median firm captures net benefits of up to 5.5% of firm value. Small and profitable firms have high optimal leverage ratios, as predicted by theory but in contrast to existing empirical evidence. Companies are on average slightly underlevered relative to the optimal leverage ratio at refinancing. This result is mainly due to zero leverage firms. I also look at implications for financial policy.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1370445_code340494.pdf?abstractid=1370445&mirid=1&type=2

The Net Benefits to Leverage

Cash flows and leverage adjustments

Recent research has emphasized the impact of transaction costs on firm leverage adjustments. We recognize that cashflow realizations can provide opportunities to adjust leverage at relatively low marginal cost. We find that a firm's cashflow features affect not only the leverage target, but also the speed of adjustment toward that target. Heterogeneity in adjustment speeds is driven by an economically meaningful concept: adjustment costs. Accounting for this fact produces adjustment speeds that are significantly faster than previously estimated in the literature. We also analyze how both financial constraints and market timing variables affect adjustments toward a leverage target.

Cash Flows and Leverage Adjustments

Both risk management and payout decisions affect a firm’s financial flexibility — the ability to avoid costly financial distress as well as underinvestment. We provide evidence of substitution between hedging and payout decisions using samples of both financial and nonfinancial firms. We find that a more flexible distribution, favoring repurchases over dividends, is negatively related to financial hedging within a firm, consistent with financial flexibility in payout decisions and hedging being substitutes. Our findings, which are robust to controlling for the endogeneity of hedging and payout choices, suggest that payout flexibility offers operational hedging benefits.

Kristine Watson Hankins

Papers

Estimating Dynamic Panel Models in Corporate Finance

Estimating dynamic panel models in corporate finance

Cash flows and leverage adjustments

Cash Flows and Leverage Adjustments

Financial Flexibility, Risk Management, and Payout Choice