What drives security issuance decisions: Market timing, pecking order, or both?

We study market timing and pecking order in a sample of debt and equity issues and share repurchases of Canadian firms from 1998 to 2007. We find that only when firms are not financially constrained is there evidence that firms issue (repurchase) equity when their shares are overvalued (undervalued) and evidence that overvalued issuers earn lower postannouncement long-run returns. Similarly, we find that only when firms are not overvalued do they prefer debt to equity financing. These findings highlight an interaction between market timing and pecking order effects

Behavioral Corporate Finance: A Survey

Research in behavioral corporate finance takes two distinct approaches. The first emphasizes that investors are less than fully rational. It views managerial financing and investment decisions as rational responses to securities market mispricing. The second approach emphasizes that managers are less than fully rational. It studies the effect of nonstandard preferences and judgmental biases on managerial decisions. This survey reviews the theory, empirical challenges, and current evidence pertaining to each approach. Overall, the behavioral approaches help to explain a number of important financing and investment patterns. The survey closes with a list of open questions.

Capital Structure and Political Risk in Asia-Pacific Real Estate Markets

This study investigates the determinants of capital structure decisions by real estate firms, with a specific focus on the impact of political risk on leverage. Using a sample of Asia-Pacific REITs and listed property trusts, we find those firms with properties located in countries characterized by relatively high degrees of political risk, such as political instability, and/or greater uncertainty in the ability to repatriate and monetize profits from international investment activities, employ less debt than their counterparts operating in more politically stable environments. This core finding remains robust to alternative sample selection criteria including the division of the sample into high versus low market-to-book value firms, and also holds within the subset of organizations that are active in raising additional capital in the secondary markets

The impact of growth opportunities on the investment-cash flow sensitivity.

This paper investigates the impact of growth opportunities on the interpretation of investment-cash flow sensitivity of large Belgian companies. We use data on long time listed firms, recent IPO firms and large unlisted firms to incorporate a wide variation in information asymmetry. Our results reveal that when information asymmetry is high, decreasing cash flow sensitivity as growth prospects improve is not necessarily caused by agency costs of free cash flow. Rather, it may indicate that capital constrained firms increase the use of external financing in high growth periods as these financing sources then tend to become more appealing.

No Deep Pockets: Some stylized results on firms' financial constraints

This paper is a brief survey of recent empirical work on financial constraints faced by firms. It is organized as a series of stylized results which mirror what is generally understood about severity of financial constraints and effects that they have upon firms. This survey shows that (a) the financial constraint is a widespread key concern for firms, hindering their ability to carry out their optimal investment and growth trajectories and (b) the severity of such constraints depends on institutional and firm specific characteristics, as well as on the nature of investment projects.Firms’ financial constraints; Firm-level studies.

Financing Constraints and the Timing of Innovations in the German Services Sector

Using newly available data at the firm level, this study provides convincing evidence of the importance of financial constraints in explaining the timing of innovations in the German services sector. Based on a dynamic model of firms' optimal R&D behavior under financial constraints, we estimate various versions of an econometric specification of the model with dichotomous innovation data by using a univariate ordered probit model and a newly developed modification of it. The modified econometric estimation strategies takes into account that some of the regressors are measured on an ordinal scale. Our results are consistent with the theoretical view that, because of capital markets imperfections, internal finance should be an important determinant of innovative activities by private firms in the manufacturing sector as well as in the services sector.

Further Evidence on Debt-Equity Choice

Using a large sample of 5,365 European firms,we document the driving factors of debt-equity choices. Adjustments to a target debt level play a modest role except when debt exceeds an upper barrier, a result that underlines the importance of debt capacity. Preference for internal financing, leverage deficit prior to equity issues, as well as a high level of slack of firms seeking to reduce equity constitute further evidence in favor of pecking order models. It is also found that managers try to time the market by issuing shares when returns are high, but that there is a link between financing and investment activities as predicted by agency models.Dynamic capital structure; Debt-equity choice; Tradeoff models; Pecking order models

Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors are Reliably Important?

This paper examines the relative importance of many factors in the capital structure decisions of publicly traded American firms from 1950 to 2003. The most reliable factors for explaining market leverage are: median industry leverage (+ effect on leverage), market-to-book assets ratio (−), tangibility (+), profits (−), log of assets (+), and expected inflation (+). In addition, we find that dividend-paying firms tend to have lower leverage. When considering book leverage, somewhat similar effects are found. However, for book leverage, the impact of firm size, the market-to-book ratio, and the effect of inflation are not reliable. The empirical evidence seems reasonably consistent with some versions of the trade-off theory of capital structure.Capital structure; Pecking order; Tradeoff theory; market timing; multiple imputation.

Market implied ratings and financing constraints: evidence from US firms

Financing constraints have been found to play an important role in several aspects of firm behavior, but no attention has been given to their effects on credit ratings. In this paper we analyze a unique and comprehensive data-set for US firms rated by Fitch over the period 2001--2007. We employ Fitch's market implied ratings derived from bond and equity prices. The analysis finds evidence that financial variables are more important in predicting credit ratings for firms likely to face financing constraints. We conclude that the financing constraint is an important dimension in the market implied ratings process. Our findings are of relevance to managers, investors and rating agencies seeking to understand the mechanism through which financing constraints affect credit ratings