Agency costs, capital structure and corporate performance

Agency Costs, Risk Management, and Capital Structure

The joint determination of capital structure and investment risk is examined. Optimal capital structure re ects both the tax advantages of debt less default costs (Modigliani-Miller), and the agency costs resulting from asset substitution (Jensen-Meckling). Agency costs restrict leverage and debt maturity and increase yield spreads, but their importance is relatively small for the range of envi...

Managerial Flexibility, Agency Costs and Optimal Capital Structure

This paper investigates the effect of managerial flexibility on the choice of capital structure for a firm and the corresponding valuation of its long term debt. We consider a general model in continuous time where the manager (who is not a shareholder) of a firm with long term debt in place may dynamically switch strategies at random times so as to maximize his expected discounted compensation...

Bank Capital, Agency Costs, and Monetary Policy

Evidence suggests that banks, like firms, face financial frictions when raising funds. The authors develop a quantitative, monetary business cycle model in which agency problems affect both the relationship between banks and firms and the relationship between banks and their depositors. As a result, bank capital and entrepreneurial net worth jointly determine aggregate investment, and are impor...

Risk Management and Capital Structure: Information Costs and Agency Costs Effects

This paper seeks to encompass elements of both the Modigliani and Miller (1958, 1963) and Jensen and Meckling (1976) approaches to optimal capital structure within a unified framework with shadow costs of incomplete information. Making the most of the major work of Merton (1987), Leland (1996, 1998) and Bellalah (2001a), we put forward a model that reflects the interaction of financing decision...

Trends in Corporate Profitability and Capital Costs