Liquidity and its impact on bond prices

In this paper, we propose a theoretical continuous-time model to analyze the impact of liquidity on bond prices. This model prices illiquid bonds relative to liquid bonds and provides a testable theory of illiquidity induced price discounts. The model is tested using 1992-1994 data from bonds issued by the german government.These bonds define a market segment that is homogeneous in bankruptcy risk, taxes, age, and coupons, but the bonds differ with respect to their liquidity. The empirical findings suggest that bond prices not only depend on the dynamics of interest rates, but also on the liquidity of bonds. Therefore, bond liquidity should be used as an additional pricing factor. The findings of the out-of-sample test demonstrate the superiority of the model in comparison with traditional pricing models

Debt Maturity Choices, Multi-stage Investments and Financing Constraints

We develop a dynamic investment options framework with optimal capital structure and analyze the effect of debt maturity. We find that in the absence of financing constraints short-term debt maximizes firm value. In contrast with most literature results, in the absence of constraints, higher volatility may increase initial debt for firms with low initial revenues, issuing long term debt that expires after the investment option maturity. This effect, which is due to the option value of receiving the value of assets and remaining tax savings, does not hold for short term debt and firms with high profitability, where an increase in volatility reduces the firm value. The importance of short-term debt is reduced in the presence of non-negative equity net worth or debt financing constraints and firms behave more conservatively in the use of initial debt. With non-negative equity net worth, higher volatility has adverse effects on the firm value, while with debt financing constraints higher volatility may enhance firm value for firms with relatively low revenue that have out-of-the-money investment options