What Is the Cost of Financial Flexibility? Theory and Evidence for Make-Whole Call Provisions
Abstract
"Firms commonly incorporate make-whole call provisions in their newly issued debt, presumably to improve their ability to retire debt early if circumstances require. In return for increased financial flexibility, firms must compensate bondholders with additional (incremental) yield. To estimate theoretical incremental yields, we use and calibrate a structural model for a large sample of callable and noncallable US corporate bonds issued between 1995 and 2004. In a frictionless model where calls occur only when they are in-the-money, theoretical incremental yields average approximately 2 basis points (bp). In an extended model that incorporates taxes, transactions costs, and randomly occurring exogenous events requiring early bond retirement, incremental yields average approximately 5 bp. Empirical analysis, however, indicates that observed incremental yields are significantly greater than model-generated values, averaging between 13 and 24 bp. In the later years of our sample period, however, observed incremental yields begin to converge to model-generated values." Copyright (c) 2008 Financial Management Association International..Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Financial Management Association International in its journal Financial Management.
Volume (Year): 37 (2008)
Issue (Month): 3 (09)
Pages: 485-512
Contact details of provider:
Postal: University of South Florida 4202 E. Fowler Ave. COBA #3331, Tampa, FL 33620
Phone: 813-974-3318
Fax: 813-974-2084
Web page: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0046-3892
More information through EDIRC
Order Information:
Web: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/subs.asp?ref=0046-3892
Related research
Keywords:References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:finmgt:v:37:y:2008:i:3:p:485-512For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

