Showing papers on "Leverage (finance) published in 2005"

House Prices, Borrowing Constraints, and Monetary Policy in the Business Cycle

Abstract: I develop a general equilibrium model with sticky prices, credit constraints, nominal loans and asset prices. Changes in asset prices modify agents’ borrowing capacity through collateral value; changes in nominal prices affect real repayments through debt deflation. Monetary policy shocks move asset and nominal prices in the same direction, and are amplified and propagated over time. The “financial accelerator” is not constant across shocks: nominal debt stabilises supply shocks, making the economy less volatile when the central bank controls the interest rate. I discuss the role of equity, debt indexation and household and firm leverage in the propagation mechanism. Finally, I find that monetary policy should not target asset prices as a means of reducing output and inflation volatility.

In Search of Distress Risk

Abstract: This paper explores the determinants of corporate failure and the pricing of financially distressed stocks using US data over the period 1963 to 2003. Firms with higher leverage, lower profitability, lower market capitalization, lower past stock returns, more volatile past stock returns, lower cash holdings, higher market-book ratios, and lower prices per share are more likely to file for bankruptcy, be delisted, or receive a D rating. When predicting failure at longer horizons, the most persistent firm characteristics, market capitalization, the market-book ratio, and equity volatility become relatively more significant. Our model captures much of the time variation in the aggregate failure rate. Since 1981, financially distressed stocks have delivered anomalously low returns. They have lower returns but much higher standard deviations, market betas, and loadings on value and small-cap risk factors than stocks with a low risk of failure. These patterns hold in all size quintiles but are particularly strong in smaller stocks. They are inconsistent with the conjecture that the value and size effects are compensation for the risk of financial distress.

Dividend Policy and the Earned/Contributed Capital Mix: A Test of the Lifecycle Theory

Abstract: Consistent with a lifecycle theory of dividends, the fraction of publicly traded industrial firms that pays dividends is high when retained earnings are a large portion of total equity (and of total assets) and falls to near zero when most equity is contributed rather than earned. We observe a highly significant relation between the decision to pay dividends and the earned/contributed capital mix, controlling for profitability, growth, firm size, leverage, cash balances, and dividend history, a relation that also holds for dividend initiations and omissions. In our regressions, the mix of earned/contributed capital has a quantitatively greater impact than measures of profitability and growth opportunities. We document a massive increase in firms with negative retained earnings (from 11.8% of industrials in 1978 to 50.2% in 2002). Controlling for the earned/contributed capital mix, firms with negative retained earnings show virtually no change in their propensity to pay dividends from the mid-1970s to 2002, while those whose earned equity makes them reasonable candidates to pay dividends have a propensity reduction that is twice the overall reduction in Fama and French (2001). All our evidence supports the lifecycle theory of dividends, in which a firm's stage in that cycle is well-proxied by its mix of internal and external capital.

Do Firms Rebalance Their Capital Structures

Abstract: We empirically examine whether firms engage in a dynamic rebalancing of their capital structures while allowing for costly adjustment. We begin by showing that the presence of adjustment costs has significant implications for corporate financial policy and the interpretation of previous empirical results. After confirming that financing behavior is consistent with the presence of adjustment costs, we find that firms actively rebalance their leverage to stay within an optimal range. Our evidence suggests that the persistent effect of shocks on leverage observed in previous studies is more likely due to adjustment costs than indifference toward capital structure. A TRADITIONAL VIEW IN CORPORATE FINANCE is that firms strive to maintain an optimal capital structure that balances the costs and benefits associated with varying degrees of financial leverage. When firms are perturbed from this optimum, this view argues that companies respond by rebalancing their leverage back to the optimal level. However, recent empirical evidence has led researchers to question whether firms actually engage in such a dynamic rebalancing of their capital structures. Fama and French (2002), among others, note that firms’ debt ratios adjust slowly toward their targets. That is, firms appear to take a long time to return their leverage to its long-run mean or, loosely speaking, optimal level. Moreover, Baker and Wurgler (2002) document that historical efforts to time equity issuances with high market valuations have a persistent impact on corporate capital structures. This fact leads them to conclude that capital structures are the cumulative outcome of historical market timing efforts, rather than the result of a dynamic optimizing strategy. Finally, Welch (2004) finds that equity price shocks have a long-lasting effect on corporate capital structures as well. He concludes that stock returns are the primary determinant of capital structure changes and that corporate motives for net issuing activity are largely a

Governance Mechanisms and Equity Prices

Abstract: We investigate how the market for corporate control (external governance) and shareholder activism (internal governance) interact. A portfolio that buys firms with the highest level of takeover vulnerability and shorts firms with the lowest level of takeover vulnerability generates an annualized abnormal return of 10% to 15% only when public pension fund (blockholder) ownership is high as well. A similar portfolio created to capture the importance of internal governance generates annualized abnormal returns of 8%, though only in the presence of “high” vulnerability to takeovers. The complementarity effect exists for firms with lower industry-adjusted leverage and is stronger for smaller firms.

Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Housing

Abstract: I show that investment in housing plays a crucial role in explaining the patterns of cross-sectional variation in the composition of wealth and the level of stockholdings observed in portfolio composition data. Due to investment in housing, younger and poorer investors have limited financial wealth to invest in stocks, which reduces the benefits of equity market participation. House price risk crowds out stockholdings, and this crowding out effect is larger for low financial net-worth. In the model as in the data leverage is positively correlated with stockholdings. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

In Search of Distress Risk

Abstract: This paper explores the determinants of corporate failure and the pricing of financially distressed stocks using US data over the period 1963 to 2003. Firms with higher leverage, lower profitability, lower market capitalization, lower past stock returns, more volatile past stock returns, lower cash holdings, higher market-book ratios, and lower prices per share are more likely to file for bankruptcy, be delisted, or receive a D rating. When predicting failure at longer horizons, the most persistent firm characteristics, market capitalization, the market-book ratio, and equity volatility become relatively more significant. Our model captures much of the time variation in the aggregate failure rate. Since 1981, financially distressed stocks have delivered anomalously low returns. They have lower returns but much higher standard deviations, market betas, and loadings on value and small-cap risk factors than stocks with a low risk of failure. These patterns hold in all size quintiles but are particularly strong in smaller stocks. They are inconsistent with the conjecture that the value and size effects are compensation for the risk of financial distress.

The Pooling and Tranching of Securities: A Model of Informed Intermediation

Abstract: I show that when an issuer has superior information about the value of its assets, it is better off selling assets separately rather than as a pool due to the information destruction effect of pooling. If, however, the issuer can create a derivative security that is collateralized by the assets, pooling and "tranching" may be optimal. If the residual risk of each asset is not highly correlated, tranching allows the issuer to exploit the risk diversification effect of pooling to create a low-risk and highly liquid security. In contrast, for an uninformed seller, pure pooling reduces underpricing and is preferred to separate asset sales. These results lead to a dynamic model of financial intermediation: originators sell pools of assets, some of which are purchased by informed intermediaries who then further pool and tranche them. Pooling and tranching allow intermediaries to leverage their capital more efficiently, enhancing the returns to their private information. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Debt Financing: Does it Boost or Hurt Firm Performance in Product Markets?

Abstract: Research on capital structure-product market interactions has traditionally sought to establish whether debt financing either hurts or boosts firm performance. This paper proposes that both of these competitive outcomes are likely to emerge in an industry setting: debt can hurt and boost a firm's product market performance. To motivate this case, I analyze a simple model implying a non-monotonic relation between a firm's use of external (debt-like) financing and its competitive conduct. I then empirically examine the within-industry relation between corporate debt and sales performance using firm-level data from a panel of 115 industries over 30 years. The testing strategy I implement allows for the marginal effect of debt policies on product market outcomes to vary according to the level of firm/rival indebtedness. Crucially, it addresses concerns with the endogeneity of financing decisions in a novel fashion: I use creditors' valuation of firms' assets in liquidation to identify financial leverage in an empirical model of product market performance. My evidence suggests that moderate (relative-to-industry) firm debt taking is, on the margin, associated with sales gains that obtain at the expense of industry rivals. After some point, however, higher relative indebtedness leads to significant sales underperformance. I also investigate whether financing-performance linkages vary with industry concentration and with firm leadership (market share size). I find that leader (follower) firms in concentrated industries underperform (outperform) their rivals when those firms' leverage ratios exceed the industry norm. In contrast, less leveraged leaders in those same industries observe positive sales-debt sensitivities. Firm debt and leadership positions are less relevant for competitive outcomes in less concentrated markets.

Disagreement, Tastes, and Asset Prices

Abstract: Standard asset pricing models assume that (i) there is complete agreement among investors about probability distributions of future payoffs on assets, and (ii) investors choose asset holdings based solely on anticipated payoffs; that is, investment assets are not also consumption goods. Both assumptions are unrealistic. We provide a simple framework for studying how disagreement and tastes for assets as consumption goods can affect asset prices.

Managerial Stock Ownership and the Maturity Structure of Corporate Debt

Abstract: This study documents that managerial stock ownership plays an important role in determining corporate debt maturity. Controlling for previously identified determinants of debt maturity and modeling leverage and debt maturity as jointly endogenous, we document a significant and robust inverse relation between managerial stock ownership and corporate debt maturity. We also show that managerial stock ownership influences the relation between credit quality and debt maturity and between growth opportunities and debt maturity. THE IMPORTANCE OF LEVERAGE AND DEBT MATURITY STRUCTURE CHOICE in alleviating manager‐shareholder agency conflicts is well recognized in the finance literature. These vital decisions are at the discretion of top managers who are expected to make optimal (value-maximizing) financing choices on behalf of the shareholders. However, given the separation of ownership and control, managers cannot be expected to voluntarily choose the optimal debt maturity structure or leverage and self-impose monitoring unless there is an incentive mechanism to align managerial and shareholder interests. It is clear, therefore, that these decisions themselves are subject to an agency problem of managerial discretion. Managerial stock ownership can be effective in aligning the interests of managers and shareholders to mitigate such agency problems (see, e.g., Jensen and Meckling (1976)). We argue that the conflict between managers and shareholders over the maturity structure of debt arises from the inherent preference of self-interested managers for less monitoring. Our study adds a new dimension to the recently growing body of literature on capital structure choice in the presence of agency conflicts. By examining how managerial stock ownership determines corporate debt maturity structure, we provide evidence on an important, yet unaddressed, issue that is at the confluence of the capital structure and corporate governance literatures. Earlier capital structure studies emphasize the role of debt in reducing agency problems between managers and shareholders (see, e.g., Jensen and

Managerial Incentives and Risk-taking

Abstract: This paper provides empirical evidence of a strong causal relation between the structure of managerial compensation and investment policy, debt policy, and firm risk. Controlling for CEO pay-performance sensitivity (delta) and the feedback effects of firm policy and risk on the structure of the managerial compensation scheme, we find that higher sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock volatility (vega) implements riskier policy choices, including relatively more investment in R&D, less investment in property, plant and equipment, more focus on fewer lines of business, and higher leverage. At the same time, we find that riskier policy choices in general lead to compensation structure with higher vega and lower delta. Stock-return volatility, however, has a positive effect on both vega and delta.

How SME Uniqueness Affects Capital Structure: Evidence From A 1994–1998 Spanish Data Panel

Abstract: The principal aim of this paper is to test how firm characteristics affect Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) capital structure. We carry out an empirical analysis of panel data of 6482 non-financial Spanish SMEs during the five years period 1994–1998, modelling the leverage ratio as a function of firm specific attributes hypothesized by capital structure theory. Our results suggest that non-debt tax shields and profitability are both negatively related to SME leverage, while size, growth options and asset structure influence positively SME capital structure; they also confirm a maturity matching behaviour in this firm group.

The capital structure of Swiss companies: an empirical analysis using dynamic panel data

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse the determinants of the capital structure for a panel of 104 Swiss companies listed in the Swiss stock exchange. Dynamic tests are performed for the period 1991–2000. It is found that the size of companies and the importance of tangible assets are positively related to leverage, while growth and profitability are negatively associated with leverage. The sign of these relations suggest that both the pecking order and trade-off theories are at work in explaining the capital structure of Swiss companies, although more evidence exists to validate the latter theory. Our analysis also shows that Swiss firms adjust toward a target debt ratio, but the adjustment process is much slower than in most other countries. It is argued that reasons for this can be found in the institutional context.

Are Firms Underleveraged? An Examination of the Effect of Leverage on Default Probabilities

Abstract: A commonly held view in corporate finance is that firms are less leveraged than they should be, given the potentially large tax benefits of debt. In this paper, I study the effect of firms' leverage on default probabilities as represented by the firms' ratings. Using an instrumental variable approach, I find that the leverage's effect on ratings is three times stronger than it is if the endogeneity of leverage is ignored. This stronger effect results in a higher impact of leverage on the ex ante costs of financial distress, which can offset the current estimates of the tax benefits of debt.

Do Firms Target Credit Ratings or Leverage Levels

Abstract: Firms reduce leverage following credit rating downgrades. In the year following a downgrade, downgraded firms issue approximately 1.5-2.0% less net debt relative to net equity as a percentage of assets compared to other firms. This relationship persists within an empirical model of target leverage behavior. The effect of a downgrade is larger at downgrades to a speculative grade rating and if commercial paper access is affected. In particular, firms downgraded to speculative are about twice as likely to reduce debt as other firms. Rating upgrades do not affect subsequent capital structure activity, suggesting that firms target minimum rating levels.

Pecking order or trade-off hypothesis? Evidence on the capital structure of Chinese companies

Abstract: This study tests the pecking order and trade-off hypotheses of corporate financing decisions using a cross-section of the largest Chinese listed companies. The study is built on Allen (1993), Baskin (1989) and Adedeji (1998) to set up three models in which trade-off and pecking order theories give distinctively different predictions: (1) the determinants of leverage; (2) the relationship between leverage and dividends; and (3) the determinants of corporate investment. In model 1, a significant negative correlation is found between leverage and profitability; in model 2 a significant positive correlation between current leverage and past dividends is found. These results broadly support the pecking order hypothesis over trade-off theory. However, model 3 is inconclusive. Overall, the results provide tentative support for the pecking order hypothesis and demonstrate that a conventional model of corporate capital structure can explain the financing behaviour of Chinese companies.

The Book-to-Price Effect in Stock Returns: Accounting for Leverage

Abstract: This paper lays out a decomposition of book-to-price (B/P) that articulates precisely how B/P "absorbs" leverage. The B/P ratio can be decomposed into an enterprise book-to-price (that pertains to operations and potentially reflects operating risk) and a leverage component (that reflects financing risk). The empirical analysis shows that the enterprise book-to-price ratio is positively related to subsequent stock returns but, conditional upon the enterprise book-to-price, the leverage component of B/P is negatively associated with future stock returns. Further, both enterprise book-to-price and leverage explain returns over those associated with Fama and French nominated factors - including the book-to-price factor - albeit negatively so for leverage. The seemingly perverse finding with respect to the leverage component of B/P survives under controls for size, estimated beta, return volatility, momentum, and default risk.

Real options, agency conflicts, and optimal capital structure

Abstract: We examine the impact of a stockholder–bondholder conflict over the timing of the exercise of an investment option on firm value and corporate financial policy. We find that an equity-maximizing firm exercises the option too early relative to a value-maximizing strategy, and we show how this problem can be characterized as one of overinvestment in risky investment projects. Equityholders’ incentive to overinvest significantly decreases firm value and optimal leverage, and significantly increases the credit spread of risky debt. Numerical solutions illustrate how the agency cost of overinvestment and its effect on corporate financial policy vary with firm and project characteristics.

What Do Firms Disclose and Why? Enforcing Corporate Governance and Transparency in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract: While specific corporate governance rules often are controversial, most observers agree on the need to disclose who owns and controls a firm and what governance arrangements are in place. This paper examines such disclosure in a sample of 370 companies listed on stock exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe. The data show widespread non-disclosure of even the most basic elements of corporate governance arrangements, despite existing regulation. The level of disclosure varies substantially across firms, and there is a strong country effect in what companies disclose. Overall, what is disclosed depends on the legal framework and practice in a given country, but it does not correlate with firms' financial performance. On the other hand, financial performance is strongly related with how easily available the information is to the public. In particular, information is more available in larger firms, firms with lower leverage, higher market-to-book ratios, and more concentrated ownership.

Stock Market Liberalization and Operating Performance at the Firm Level

Abstract: I use firm-specific measures of openness to foreign investors to study the impact of stock market liberalization on firm-level operating performance. In a sample of over 1,100 firms from 28 countries, firms with stocks that are open to foreign investors experience higher growth, greater investment, greater profitability, greater efficiency, and lower leverage. Strategies to address potential endogeneity suggest that the observed relationship, at least in part, reflects a causal effect of openness on operating performance.

Asset Sales, Investment Opportunities, and the Use of Proceeds

Abstract: This study examines the allocation of cash proceeds following 400 subsidiary sales between 1990 and 1998. Retention probabilities are increasing in the divesting firm's contemporaneous growth opportunities and expected investment. Retaining firms, however, also systematically overinvest relative to an industry benchmark. Shareholder returns to retention decisions are positively correlated with growth opportunities and benchmarked investment, but negatively correlated with benchmarked investment for firms with poor growth opportunities. Shareholder returns to debt distributions are increasing in industry-benchmarked leverage. Overall, the results of this study cohere with the hypothesized trade-off between the investment efficiencies associated with retained proceeds and the agency costs of managerial discretion and debt. SALES OF LARGE CORPORATE SUBSIDIARIES became an increasingly common form of business restructuring by U.S. corporations through the decade of the 1990s. The Securities Data Corporation (SDC) reports that the number of large subsidiary sales, valued at $75 million or more, increased steadily from 127 transactions completed in 1990, to 535 transactions completed in 1998. Unlike other divestiture methods, such as asset spinoffs and carveouts involving the distribution of proceeds to a subsidiary, a divesting firm typically receives remuneration at the effective date of a sale. Often this compensation includes a substantial cash component. For example, average cash compensation was consistently in excess of 80% of transaction value in large subsidiary sales completed between 1990 and 1998. In this sense, asset sales rarely result in an immediate reduction in assets, but often substantially increase liquidity for the divesting firm. This observation is significant from a shareholder's perspective because, similar to free cash flow from operations, cash proceeds from a sale can be reallocated to the unfunded projects of the divesting firm, albeit at the discretion of management. The extant literature cites countervailing costs and benefits associated with the retention of sale proceeds for subsequent investment by a divesting firm. On the one hand, capital market frictions make raising external capital costly

Taxation and the Financial Structure of German Outbound FDI

Abstract: The paper analyzes the financial structure of outbound FDI during the period 1996-2002 by drawing on up to 54,022 firm-year observations of 13,758 German-owned subsidiaries. We find that the tax rate in the host country has a sizeable and significantly positive effect on leverage for wholly-owned foreign unlike partially-owned foreign companies. Most of the effect comes from increased intra-company borrowing, while third-party debt is not significantly affected by tax differences. While wholly-owned subsidiaries react more sensitively to tax rate differentials, they are less sensitive to macroeconomic influences like interest rates.

What do firms disclose and why? enforcing corporate governance and transparency in central and eastern europe

Abstract: While specific corporate-governance rules are often controversial, most observers agree on the need to disclose who owns and controls a firm and what governance arrangements are in place. This paper examines such disclosure in a sample of 370 companies listed on stock exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe. The data show widespread non-disclosure of even the most basic elements of corporate-governance arrangements, despite existing regulation. The level of disclosure varies substantially across firms, and there is a strong country effect in what companies disclose. Overall, what is disclosed depends on the legal framework and practice in a given country, but it does not correlate with firms' financial performance. On the other hand, financial performance is strongly related with how easily available the information is to the public. In particular, information is more available in larger firms, firms with lower leverage, higher market-to-book ratios, and more concentrated ownership. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Ultimate Corporate Ownership Structures and Capital Structures: Evidence from East Asian Economies

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between corporate leverage and the ultimate corporate ownership structure, particularly the separation of cash flow rights and control rights. We empirically disentangle the three potential effects of the divergence of control rights from cash flow rights on corporate leverage, i.e. the non-dilution entrenchment effect, the signalling effect of debt and the reduce-debt-for-tunnelling effect. Our evidence from the East Asian corporations mainly supports the notion that controlling shareholders with relatively small ownership share tend to increase leverage out of the motive of raising external finance without diluting their shareholding dominance. The separation of cash flow rights and control rights contributes to the risk-taking tendency of the large controlling shareholders in capital structure choice. We argue that the risky capital structure choice serves as one potential channel through which weak corporate governance contributes to the severity of corporate value losses during the Asian financial crisis.

Corporate Governance and Value in Brazil (and in Chile)

Abstract: We construct a corporate governance practices index (CGI) from a set of 24 questions that can be objectively answered from publicly available information. Our goal was to measure the overall quality of corporate governance practices of the largest possible number of firms without the biases and low response ratios typical of qualitative surveys. CGI levels have improved over time in Brazil. CGI components demonstrate that Brazilian firms perform much better in disclosure than in other aspects of corporate governance. We find very high concentration levels of voting rights leveraged by the widespread use of indirect control structures and non-voting shares. Control has concentrated between 1998 and 2002. We do not find evidence for either entrenchment or incentives in Brazil using ownership percentages but find that the separation of control from cash flow rights destroys value. The CGI maintains a positive, significant, and robust relationship with corporate value. A worst-to-best improvement in the CGI in 2002 would lead to a .38 increase in Tobin's q. This represents a 95% rise in the stock value of a company with the average leverage and Tobin's q ratios. Considering our lowest CGI coefficient, a one point increase in the CGI score would lead to a 6.8% rise in the stock price of the average firm in 2002. We found no significant relationship between governance and the dividend payout but there are indications that dividend payments are greater when control and cash flow rights concentration are greater. We place our results in context by offering a comparative analysis with Chile. We would offer a sound "yes" if asked whether good corporate governance practices increase corporate value in Brazil.

Measuring Investment Distortions when Risk-Averse Managers Decide Whether to Undertake Risky Projects

Abstract: The corporate finance literature has extensively modeled the distortions in investment decisions that result from conflicts of interest between claimholders. These models generally imply that firms make suboptimal project choices, either in terms of good projects that are rejected, or bad projects that are accepted. Since it is difficult to observe management forecasts of project net present values, especially for projects that are not ultimately undertaken, it is difficult to assess the importance of these models quantitatively. One approach to evaluating the importance of investment distortions is to first calibrate a model that uses data from public firms, and then estimate the magnitude of the distortion in investment decisions by examining the characteristics of the projects that the model predicts would be accepted or rejected. Studies such as those by Mello and Parsons (1992), Leland (1998), Parrino and Weisbach (1999), Moyen (2000), and Titman and Tsyplakov (2001) use this approach to estimate the magnitude of the impact of stockholder/debtholder conflicts on investment decisions. However, papers that examine stockholder/debtholder conflicts in this way typically do not consider the conflict of interest between managers and stockholders. Instead, they usually assume that managers seek to maximize the value of the firm’s stock. In this article, we relax this assumption and estimate the magnitude of stockholder/manager conflicts, their interactions with stockholder/debtholder conflicts, and their effect on a firm’s investment decisions. We do so by considering a risk-averse manager who makes the investment decisions at a firm, and at the same time seeks to maximize his own utility function. In our model, the manager owns shares in a levered firm (which he cannot hedge), options on the firm’s stock, and has other wealth that is independent of the value of the firm. We model the firm by using the We create a dynamic model in which a self-interested, risk-averse manager makes corporate investment decisions at a levered firm with characteristics typical of public US firms. We examine the magnitude of distortions in those decisions when a new project changes firm risk and find expected changes in the values of future tax shields and bankruptcy costs to be important factors. We evaluate the extent to which these distortions vary with firm leverage, debt duration, project size, managerial risk aversion, managerial non-firm wealth, and the structure of management compensation packages.