Uncertainty and stepwise investment

We analyze the optimal investment strategy of a firm that can complete a project either in one stage at a single freely chosen time point or in incremental steps at distinct time points. The presence of economies of scale gives rise to the following trade-off: lumpy investment has a lower total cost, but stepwise investment gives more flexibility by letting the firm choose the timing individually for each stage. Our main question is how uncertainty in market development affects this trade-off. The answer is unambiguous and in contrast with a conventional real-options intuition: higher uncertainty makes the single-stage investment more attractive relative to the more flexible stepwise investment strategy

Leaders and followers in hot IPO markets

We model the dynamics of going public within an IPO wave. The model predicts that firms with better growth opportunities can find it optimal to go public early and accept underpricing of their issues to signal quality. Data supports this prediction as, on average, early movers underprice their issues significantly more and we show that leaders (early movers with high underpricing) obtain much higher valuations when going public than other IPO firms. Furthermore, after going public, leaders invest significantly more, their sales grow faster, and their profitability remains higher compared to other IPO firms

Effectiveness of monitoring, managerial entrenchment, and corporate cash holdings

We develop a dynamic model of a firm in which cash management is partially delegated to a self-interested manager. Shareholders trade off the cost of dismissing the manager with the cost of managerial discretion over the use of liquid funds. An improvement in corporate governance quality may have a positive or a negative effect on levels and values of cash balances, depending on the source of the improvement. While a reduction of managerial entrenchment results in lower cash balances and mostly higher marginal cash values, we demonstrate that the opposite is true when the monitoring of managerial actions becomes more effective. A managerial asset substitution problem produces a novel hump-shaped relation between the firm's liquidity levels and the collective propensity of shareholders and managers to reduce cash flow risk. We also discuss the firm's risk management strategies as well as derive implications of the presence of an investment opportunity, debt financing, and shareholder activism.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Can Capital Adjustment Costs Explain the Decline in Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivity?

It is well documented that since at least the 1970s investment-cash flow (I-CF) sensitivity has been decreasing over time to disappear almost completely by the late 2000s. Based on a neoclassical investment model with costly external financing, we show that this pattern can be explained by the gradual increase of capital adjustment costs, attributable to the accumulation of knowledge capital. The result is robust to a variety of approaches, including Euler equation estimation and the simulated method of moments. More generally, our findings demonstrate that I-CF sensitivity should only be interpreted as a joint measure of financial and real frictions

Optimal exercise of jointly held real options:A Nash bargaining approach with value diversion

This paper provides a two-stage decision framework in which two or more parties exercise a jointly held real option. We show that a single party’s timing decision is always socially efficient if it precedes bargaining on the terms of sharing. However, if the sharing rule is agreed before the exercise timing decision is made, then socially optimal timing is attained only if there is a cash payment element in the division of surplus. If the party that chooses the exercise timing can divert value from the project, then the first-best outcome may not be possible at all and the second-best outcome may be implemented using a contract that is generally not optimal in the former cases. Our framework contributes to the understanding of a range of empirical regularities in corporate and entrepreneurial finance

A theory of net debt and transferable human capital

Traditional theories of capital structure do not explain the puzzling phenomena of zero-leverage firms and negative net debt ratios. We develop a theory where firms adopt a net debt target that acts as a balancing variable between equityholders and managers. Negative (positive) net debt occurs in human (physical) capital intensive industries. Negative net debt arises because tradeable claims cannot be issued against transferable human capital. Heterogeneity in capital structure occurs when firms have debt that is not fully collateralized. Physical capital intensive firms take on high leverage but may underlever to avoid bankruptcy costs. This creates excess rents for managers (even if the supply of human capital is competitive) because wealth constraints prevent managers from co-investing

Underinvestment, capital structure and strategic debt restructuring

This paper shows that shareholders' option to renegotiate debt in a period of financial distress exacerbates Myers' (1977) underinvestment problem at the time of the firm's expansion. This result is a consequence of a higher wealth transfer from shareholders to creditors occurring upon investment in the presence of the option to renegotiate. This additional underinvestment is eliminated by granting creditors the entire bargaining power. In such a case, renegotiation commences at shareholders' bankruptcy trigger so no additional wealth transfer occurs. In addition to deriving the firm's policies, we provide results on the values of corporate claims, the agency cost of debt, and the optimal capital structure. Empirically, we predict, among others, a lower sensitivity of capital investment to shocks to Tobin's q and cash flow for firms financed with renegotiable debt, and a negative effect of debt renegotiability on the relationship between growth opportunities and systematic risk as well as leverage.Underinvestment Renegotiation Capital structure