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The Role of Debt and Equity Finance over the Business Cycle

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Author Info
Covas, Francisco
Den Haan, Wouter

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Abstract

This paper documents that debt and equity issuance are procyclical for most size-sorted firm categories of listed U.S. firms. The procyclicality of equity issuance decreases monotonically with firm size. At the aggregate level, however, the results are not conclusive. The reason is that issuance is countercyclical for very large firms which, although few in number, have a large effect on the aggregate because of their enormous size. We show that the shadow price of external funds is procyclical if firms use the standard one-period contract. This model property generates procyclical equity and - as in the data - the procyclicality decreases with firm size. Another factor that causes equity to be procyclical in the model is a countercyclical cost of equity issuance. The calibrated model (i) generates a countercyclical default rate, (ii) generates a stronger cyclical response for small firms, and (iii) magnifies shocks, whereas the model without equity as an external financing source does the exact opposite.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 6145.

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Date of creation: Feb 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6145

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Related research
Keywords: agency problems; firm heterogeneity; magnification;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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  1. Canadian Macro Study Group
References listed on IDEAS
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Full references

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. Francisco Covas & Yahong Zhang, 2008. "Price-Level versus Inflation Targeting with Financial Market Imperfections," Working Papers 08-26, Bank of Canada. [Downloadable!]
  2. André Kurmann & Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, 2007. "Search Frictions in Physical Capital Markets as a Propagation Mechanism," Cahiers de recherche 0712, CIRPEE. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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