Title: Capital Structure Redux: Maturity, Leverage, and Flexibility
Abstract: We investigate how a firm jointly determines the amount of debt and its maturity in a dynamic capital structure. We find a firm with high volatility of earnings optimally issues debts of shorter maturity which helps it maintain its financial flexibility. Using simultaneous equations of leverage and maturity regression, we find that higher leverage is led by shorter maturity. Our results support the dynamic capital structure model in which a firm decides its leverage as a trade-o between bankruptcy costs and tax benefits, as well as optimally adjusting the maturity of its debt by taking account of their financial flexibility versus the costs of new debt issuance. These findings can explain why financial institutions with high volatility of earnings before the 2007-2009 financial crisis had higher leverage as well as huge short-term financing.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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