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.

Asset Price Shocks, Financial Constraints, and Investment: Evidence from Japan

This paper examines investment spending of Japanese firms around the "asset price bubble" in the late-1980s and makes three contributions to our understanding of how stock valuations affect investment. First, corporate investment responds significantly to nonfundamental components of stock valuations during asset price shocks; fundamentals matter less. Clearly, the stock market is not a 'sideshow'. Second, the time series variation in the sensitivity of investment to cash flow is affected more by changes in monetary policy than by shifts in collateral values. Finally, asset price shocks primarily affect firms that rely more on bank financing, and not necessarily those that use equity markets for financing. Only the investment of bank-dependent firms responds to nonfundamental valuations. In addition, the cash flow sensitivity of bank-dependent firms with large collateral assets decreases when asset prices become inflated, but increases dramatically when asset prices collapse and monetary policy tightens.Investment, liquidity, asset inflation, Japan

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

Public Disclosure, Risk, and Performance at Bank Holding Companies

This paper examines the relationship between the amount of information disclosed by bank holding companies (BHCs) and their subsequent risk profile and performance. Using data from the annual reports of BHCs with large trading operations, we construct an index of publicly disclosed information about the BHCs’ forward-looking estimates of market risk exposure in their trading and market-making activities. The paper then examines the relationship between this index and the subsequent risk and return in both the BHCs’ trading activities and the firm overall, as proxied by equity market returns. The key findings are that more disclosure is associated with lower risk, especially idiosyncratic risk, and in turn with higher risk-adjusted returns. These findings suggest that greater disclosure is associated with more efficient risk taking and thus improved risk-return trade-offs, although the direction of causation is unclear

Market discipline of bank risk: Evidence from subordinated debt contracts

Do bank debtholders discipline excessive risk taking? I investigate this question by examining how a bank's incentives to take risks affect offering yield spreads and restrictive covenants in their debt contracts. Results suggest that bank charter values, which determine a bank's risk-taking incentives, significantly affect the likelihood of restrictive covenants in bank debt contracts. This effect was most pronounced during the 1980s, when greater competition and relatively less-stringent regulation increased the severity of moral hazard problems in the US banking industry. Overall, the results suggest that an important channel for market investors to discipline bank risk taking is through writing restrictive covenants in bank debt. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Market discipline of bank risk : evidence from subordinated debt contracts

Do bank debtholders discipline excessive risk taking? I investigate this question by examining how a bank's incentives to take risks affect offering yield spreads and restrictive covenants in their debt contracts. Results suggest that bank charter values, which determine a bank's risk taking incentives, significantly affect the likelihood of restrictive covenants in bank debt contracts. This effect is most pronounced during the 1980s, when greater competition and relatively less stringent regulation increased the severity of moral hazard problems in the U.S. banking industry. Overall, the results suggest that an important channel for market investors to discipline bank risk taking is through writing restrictive covenants in bank debt

The investment opportunity set and its proxy variables

We use a real options approach to evaluate the performance of several proxy variables for a firm's investment opportunity set. The results show that, on a relative scale, the market-to-book assets ratio has the highest information content with respect to investment opportunities. Although both the market-to-book equity and the earnings-price ratios are related to investment opportunities, they do not contain information that is not already contained in the market-to-book assets ratio. Consistent with this finding, a common factor constructed from several proxy variables does not improve the performance of the market-to-book assets ratio. © 2008 The Southern Finance Association and the Southwestern Finance Association