This paper examines how external governance pressure provided by both the product market and the market for corporate control affects a borrowing firm’s choice of debt source. Using reductions in import tariffs to capture exogenous changes in a firm’s competitive environment, we find that increased product market competition has a significant negative impact on a firm’s reliance on bank debt fi...

I study the relation between firm debt structure and future financial flexibility. I consider how the total level of debt, maturity, security, and priority may potentially impact a firm’s ability to raise new financing and undertake profitable investments. I find that firms with lower total debt (high debt capacity) are more financially flexible. Lower leverage increases future new debt issues ...

Building on the Mauer and Sarker (2005) model that captures both investment flexibility and optimal capital structure and risky debt, we study the impact of debt financing constraints on firm value, the optimal timing of investment and other important variables like the credit spreads. The importance of debt financing constraints on firm value and investment policy depends largely on the relati...

We study the effect of asset liquidity (“tangibility”) on firm policies in the presence of financing constraints. We do so in a real options framework that allows for the simultaneous determination of investment and financing. In the presence of financing imperfections, firms that operate more tangible assets have larger credit capacity. By expanding the firm’s capital base, the investment proc...

We analyze a model of optimal capital structure and liquidity choice based on a dynamic tradeoff theory for financially constrained firms. In addition to the classical tradeoff between the expected tax advantages of debt and bankruptcy costs, we introduce a cost of external financing for the firm, which generates a precautionary demand for liquidity and an optimal liquidity management policy fo...

Seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) are sales of stock after the initial public offering. They are a means to raise funds through the sale of stock rather than the issuance of additional debt. We propose a method to predict the characteristics of firms that undertake this form of financing. Our procedure is based on logistic regression where firm-specific variables are obtained from the perspectiv...

Using a small open economy framework, we model the composition of capital inflows as the equilibrium outcome of emerging market firms’ financing decisions. We show that debt limits, equity issuing costs, and foreign direct investment search costs generate a financing premium and that the ”cheapest” source of financing depends on the phase of the business cycle and past financing decisions. The ...

We find over 30% of public U.S. non-financial companies have negative net-financial-obligation (NFO) during the sample period of 1965 to 2014. According to the modified DuPont analysis, NFO is defined as total debt minus excess cash and passive investments. The persistence of negative-NFO observations suggests that its occurrence is not random, raising the questions of why these firms hold such...

Recent macro developments in the euro area have highlighted the interactions between fiscal policy, sovereign debt, and financial fragility. We take a structural macroeconomic model with frictions in the financial intermediation process, in line with recent research, but introduce asset choice and sovereign debt holdings in the portfolio of banks. Using this model, we emphasize a new crowding-o...