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Liquidity and Capital Structure

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Author Info
Anderson, Ronald W
Carverhill, Andrew
Abstract

This paper solves for a firm's optimal cash holding policy within a continuous time, contingent claims framework that has been extended to incorporate most of the significant contracting frictions that have been identified in the corporate finance literature. Under the optimal policy the firm targets a level of cash holding that is a non-monotonic function of business conditions and an increasing function of the amount of long-term debt outstanding. By allowing firms to either issue equity or to borrow short-term, we show how share issue and dividends on the one hand and cash accumulation and bank borrowing on the other are all mutually interlinked. We calibrate the model and show that it matches closely a wide range of empirical benchmarks including cash holdings, leverage, equity volatility, yield spreads, default probabilities and recovery rates. Furthermore, we show the predicted dynamics of cash and leverage are in line with the empirical literature. Despite the presence of significant contracting frictions we show that the model exhibits a near irrelevance of long-term capital structure property. Furthermore, the optimal policy exhibits a state-dependent hierarchy among financing alternatives that is consistent with recent explorations of pecking order theory. We calculate the agency costs generated by the conflict of interest between shareholders and creditors regarding the firm's liquidity policy and show that bond covenants that establish an earnings restriction on dividend payments may be value increasing.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 6044.

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Date of creation: Jan 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6044

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Related research
Keywords: capital structure; dynamic corporate finance; liquidity;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. SHerrill Shaffer, 2008. "Strategic Risk Aversion," CAMA Working Papers 2008-25, Australian National University, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis. [Downloadable!]
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