The strategic use of debt reconsidered

Wanzenried (2003, International Journal of Industrial Organization 21(2), 171-200) considers a two-stage differentiated goods duopoly model with demand uncertainty linking firms? capital structure choice to their output market decisions. Unfortunately, her analysis is flawed. We correct for this, and solve the model umerically to find some results that are qualitatively different from hers. First, in equilibrium, the use of debt always yields lower firm profits, i.e. even in the case of complements. Second, the equilibrium debt level decreases as demand becomes more volatile. We also discuss some problems with the debt contract commonly used in the strategic debt literature.

License auctions when winning bids are financed through debt

We study an auction where two licenses to operate on a new market are sold, and winning bidders finance their bids on the debt market. Higher bids imply higher debts, which affects product market competition. We compare our results to those of a beauty contest and a standard auction. For the case that debt induces firms to compete more aggressively, we find that consumer prices are lower, and expected firm profits are strictly positive although firms are a priori identical. When debt induces firms to compete less aggressively, we find that firms make zero profits, and consumer prices are higher.