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Financial Contracting with Optimistic Entrepreneurs

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Author Info

  • Augustin Landier
  • David Thesmar

Abstract

Optimistic beliefs are a source of nonpecuniary benefits for entrepreneurs that can explain the "Private Equity Puzzle." This paper looks at the effects of entrepreneurial optimism on financial contracting. When the contract space is restricted to debt, we show the existence of a separating equilibrium in which optimists self-select into short-term debt and realists into long-term debt. Long-term debt is optimal for a realist entrepreneur as it smooths payoffs across states of nature. Short-term debt is optimal for optimists for two reasons: (i) "bridging the gap in beliefs" by letting the entrepreneur take a bet on his project's success, and (ii) letting the investor impose adaptation decisions in bad states.We test our theory on a large data set of French entrepreneurs. First, in agreement with the psychology literature, we find that biases in beliefs may be (partly) explained by individual characteristics and tend to persist over time. Second, as predicted by our model, we find that short-term debt is robustly correlated with "optimistic" expectation errors, even controlling for firm risk and other potential determinants of short-term leverage. The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Society for Financial Studies in its journal The Review of Financial Studies.

Volume (Year): 22 (2009)
Issue (Month): 1 (January)
Pages: 117-150

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Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:22:y:2009:i:1:p:117-150

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Philip Bond & Andrew F. Newman, 2006. "Prohibitions on Punishments in Private Contracts," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2006-060, Boston University - Department of Economics.
  2. Julio J. Rotemberg, 2010. "A Behavioral Model of Demandable Deposits and its Implications for Financial Regulation," NBER Working Papers 16620, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Giovanni Immordino & Anna Maria C. Menichini & Maria Grazia Romano, 2012. "Optimal Compensation Contracts For Optimistic Managers," Working Papers 3_224, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche, Università degli Studi di Salerno.
  4. Eliaz, Kfir & Spiegler, Ran, 2009. "Bargaining over bets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 78-97, May.
  5. Mohamed Ali AZOUZI & Anis JARBOUI, 2012. "Ceo Emotional Bias And Capital Structure Choice. Bayesian Network Method," Business Excellence and Management, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 2(2), pages 47-70, June.
  6. Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar, 2010. "Introduction to "International Differences in Entrepreneurship"," NBER Chapters, in: International Differences in Entrepreneurship, pages 1-13 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Kfir Eliaz & Rani Spiegler, 2005. "Speculative Contracts," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000628, UCLA Department of Economics.
  8. Greene, Francis, 2012. "Should the focus of publicly provided small business assistance be on start-ups or growth businesses?," Occasional Papers 12/2, Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand.
  9. Hvide, Hans K. & Panos, Georgios A., 2013. "Risk Tolerance and Entrepreneurship," IZA Discussion Papers 7206, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  10. Ashish Arora & Anand Nandkumar, 2009. "Cash-out or flame-out! Opportunity cost and entrepreneurial strategy: Theory, and evidence from the information security industry," NBER Working Papers 15532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Krüger, Philipp & Landier, Augustin & Thesmar, David, 2011. "The WACC Fallacy: The Real Effects of Using a Unique Discount Rate," IDEI Working Papers 629, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
  12. Ucbasaran, Deniz & Westhead, Paul & Wright, Mike & Flores, Manuel, 2010. "The nature of entrepreneurial experience, business failure and comparative optimism," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 541-555, November.
  13. Loss, Frédéric & Renucci, Antoine, . "Professional Reputation, Cash, and Transition to Entrepreneurial Activity," Open Access publications from Université Paris-Dauphine urn:hdl:123456789/2363, Université Paris-Dauphine.
  14. Michele Dell'Era & Luis Santos-Pinto, 2011. "Entrepreneurial Overconfidence, Self-Financing and Capital Market Efficiency," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'Econométrie et d'Economie politique (DEEP) 11.06, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP, revised Nov 2012.
  15. Ron Kaniel & Cade Massey & David T. Robinson, 2010. "The Importance of Being an Optimist: Evidence from Labor Markets," NBER Working Papers 16328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  16. Anja Sautmann, 2011. "Contracts for Agents with Biased Beliefs: Some Theory and an Experiment," Working Papers 2011-10, Brown University, Department of Economics.

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