IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/srk/srkwps/201870.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The variance risk premium and capital structure

Author

Listed:
  • Lotfaliei, Babak

Abstract

This paper investigates how the asset-return variance risk premium changes leverage. I find that the premium lowers leverage by increasing risk-neutral bankruptcy probability and costs in a model where asset returns have stochastic variance with risk premium. Empirically, the model calibrations verify significant reduction in optimal leverage, closer to observed leverage than the model without the premium. In model-free regressions, I also document negative correlation between leverage and the variance premium. The most negative correlation is among investment-grade firms with low asset beta and historical variance but high variance premium because their assets have high exposure to market variance premium. JEL Classification: G32, G33, G12

Suggested Citation

  • Lotfaliei, Babak, 2018. "The variance risk premium and capital structure," ESRB Working Paper Series 70, European Systemic Risk Board.
    • Handle: RePEc:srk:srkwps:201870
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.esrb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/wp/esrb.wp70.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ivo Welch, 2004. "Capital Structure and Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 106-131, February.
    2. Gilson, Stuart C, 1997. "Transactions Costs and Capital Structure Choice: Evidence from Financially Distressed Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 161-196, March.
    3. Goldstein, Robert & Ju, Nengjiu & Leland, Hayne, 2001. "An EBIT-Based Model of Dynamic Capital Structure," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(4), pages 483-512, October.
    4. John Y. Campbell & Jens Hilscher & Jan Szilagyi, 2008. "In Search of Distress Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2899-2939, December.
    5. Peter Christoffersen & Steven Heston & Kris Jacobs, 2013. "Capturing Option Anomalies with a Variance-Dependent Pricing Kernel," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(8), pages 1963-2006.
    6. Christopher A. Hennessy & Toni M. Whited, 2007. "How Costly Is External Financing? Evidence from a Structural Estimation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1705-1745, August.
    7. Jones, E Philip & Mason, Scott P & Rosenfeld, Eric, 1984. "Contingent Claims Analysis of Corporate Capital Structures: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 611-625, July.
    8. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1997. "Trade Credit: Theories and Evidence," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(3), pages 661-691.
    9. Arturo Bris & Ivo Welch & Ning Zhu, 2006. "The Costs of Bankruptcy: Chapter 7 Liquidation versus Chapter 11 Reorganization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1253-1303, June.
    10. Stein, Elias M & Stein, Jeremy C, 1991. "Stock Price Distributions with Stochastic Volatility: An Analytic Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(4), pages 727-752.
    11. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Jan Ericsson & Joel Reneby, 1998. "A framework for valuing corporate securities," Applied Mathematical Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(3-4), pages 143-163.
    13. Leland, Hayne E, 1994. "Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1213-1252, September.
    14. Gurdip Bakshi & Nikunj Kapadia, 2003. "Delta-Hedged Gains and the Negative Market Volatility Risk Premium," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 527-566.
    15. Campbell, John Y. & Giglio, Stefano & Polk, Christopher & Turley, Robert, 2018. "An intertemporal CAPM with stochastic volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 207-233.
    16. Shantanu Banerjee & Sudipto Dasgupta & Yungsan Kim, 2008. "Buyer–Supplier Relationships and the Stakeholder Theory of Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2507-2552, October.
    17. Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2007. "Do Tests of Capital Structure Theory Mean What They Say?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1747-1787, August.
    18. Hayne E. Leland, 1998. "Agency Costs, Risk Management, and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(4), pages 1213-1243, August.
    19. Leland, Hayne E & Toft, Klaus Bjerre, 1996. "Optimal Capital Structure, Endogenous Bankruptcy, and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 987-1019, July.
    20. Young Ho Eom, 2004. "Structural Models of Corporate Bond Pricing: An Empirical Analysis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 499-544.
    21. Welch, Ivo, 2013. "A Critique of Recent Quantitative and Deep-Structure Modeling in Capital Structure Research and Beyond," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 131-172, July.
    22. John R. Graham & Mark T. Leary, 2011. "A Review of Empirical Capital Structure Research and Directions for the Future," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 309-345, December.
    23. Justin Murfin & Ken Njoroge, 2015. "The Implicit Costs of Trade Credit Borrowing by Large Firms," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(1), pages 112-145.
    24. Geske, Robert, 1977. "The Valuation of Corporate Liabilities as Compound Options," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 541-552, November.
    25. Mark Broadie & Mikhail Chernov & Suresh Sundaresan, 2007. "Optimal Debt and Equity Values in the Presence of Chapter 7 and Chapter 11," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1341-1377, June.
    26. Stewart C. Myers, 1993. "Still Searching For Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 6(1), pages 4-14, March.
    27. Strebulaev, Ilya A. & Whited, Toni M., 2013. "Dynamic Corporate Finance is Useful: A Comment on Welch (2013)," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 173-191, July.
    28. Hui Chen, 2010. "Macroeconomic Conditions and the Puzzles of Credit Spreads and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(6), pages 2171-2212, December.
    29. Elsas, Ralf & Florysiak, David, 2015. "Dynamic Capital Structure Adjustment and the Impact of Fractional Dependent Variables," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(5), pages 1105-1133, October.
    30. Dion Bongaerts & Frank De Jong & Joost Driessen, 2011. "Derivative Pricing with Liquidity Risk: Theory and Evidence from the Credit Default Swap Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 203-240, February.
    31. Suresh Sundaresan, 2013. "A Review of Merton’s Model of the Firm’s Capital Structure with Its Wide Applications," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 21-41, November.
    32. Jean-Pierre Fouque & Ronnie Sircar & Knut Sølna, 2006. "Stochastic Volatility Effects on Defaultable Bonds," Applied Mathematical Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 215-244.
    33. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    34. David J. Denis, 2012. "The Persistent Puzzle of Corporate Capital Structure: Current Challenges and New Directions," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 631-643, November.
    35. Aït-Sahalia, Yacine & Fan, Jianqing & Li, Yingying, 2013. "The leverage effect puzzle: Disentangling sources of bias at high frequency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 224-249.
    36. Jeffery D Amato & Eli M Remolona, 2003. "The credit spread puzzle," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    37. Edwin J. Elton & Martin J. Gruber & Deepak Agrawal & Christopher Mann, 2001. "Explaining the Rate Spread on Corporate Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 247-277, February.
    38. Sergei A. Davydenko & Ilya A. Strebulaev & Xiaofei Zhao, 2012. "A Market-Based Study of the Cost of Default," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(10), pages 2959-2999.
    39. Peter F. Christoffersen & Francis X. Diebold, 2000. "How Relevant is Volatility Forecasting for Financial Risk Management?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(1), pages 12-22, February.
    40. Marc Romano & Nizar Touzi, 1997. "Contingent Claims and Market Completeness in a Stochastic Volatility Model," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(4), pages 399-412, October.
    41. Bae, Kee-Hong & Kang, Jun-Koo & Wang, Jin, 2011. "Employee treatment and firm leverage: A test of the stakeholder theory of capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 130-153, April.
    42. Anderson, Ronald W & Sundaresan, Suresh, 1996. "Design and Valuation of Debt Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(1), pages 37-68.
    43. Ai[diaeresis]t-Sahalia, Yacine & Kimmel, Robert, 2007. "Maximum likelihood estimation of stochastic volatility models," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 413-452, February.
    44. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    45. Sotirios Sabanis, 2003. "Stochastic volatility and the mean reverting process," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 33-47, January.
    46. Korajczyk, Robert A. & Levy, Amnon, 2003. "Capital structure choice: macroeconomic conditions and financial constraints," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 75-109, April.
    47. Hui Chen & Yu Xu & Jun Yang, 2012. "Systematic Risk, Debt Maturity, and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads," NBER Working Papers 18367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    48. Elisa Luciano & Giovanna Nicodano, 2014. "Guarantees, Leverage, and Taxes," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(9), pages 2736-2772.
    49. Brennan, Michael J & Schwartz, Edwardo S, 1978. "Corporate Income Taxes, Valuation, and the Problem of Optimal Capital Structure," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 103-114, January.
    50. Eugene F. Fama, 2002. "Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions About Dividends and Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    51. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    52. Choi, Jaewon & Richardson, Matthew, 2016. "The volatility of a firm's assets and the leverage effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 254-277.
    53. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    54. Heston, Steven L, 1993. "A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility with Applications to Bond and Currency Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 327-343.
    55. Giovanni S. F. Bruno, 2005. "Estimation and inference in dynamic unbalanced panel-data models with a small number of individuals," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 5(4), pages 473-500, December.
    56. Schaefer, Stephen M. & Strebulaev, Ilya A., 2008. "Structural models of credit risk are useful: Evidence from hedge ratios on corporate bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 1-19, October.
    57. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. "What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-1460, December.
    58. Harjoat S. Bhamra & Lars-Alexander Kuehn & Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2010. "The Aggregate Dynamics of Capital Structure and Macroeconomic Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(12), pages 4187-4241, December.
    59. Bekaert, Geert & Wu, Guojun, 2000. "Asymmetric Volatility and Risk in Equity Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(1), pages 1-42.
    60. Jing-Zhi Huang & Ming Huang, 2012. "How Much of the Corporate-Treasury Yield Spread Is Due to Credit Risk?," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 2(2), pages 153-202.
    61. Arthur Korteweg, 2010. "The Net Benefits to Leverage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(6), pages 2137-2170, December.
    62. Fan, Joseph P. H. & Titman, Sheridan & Twite, Garry, 2012. "An International Comparison of Capital Structure and Debt Maturity Choices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(1), pages 23-56, February.
    63. Darren J. Kisgen, 2006. "Credit Ratings and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1035-1072, June.
    64. Glover, Brent, 2016. "The expected cost of default," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 284-299.
    65. HARRY DeANGELO & RICHARD ROLL, 2015. "How Stable Are Corporate Capital Structures?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(1), pages 373-418, February.
    66. Barras, Laurent & Malkhozov, Aytek, 2016. "Does variance risk have two prices? Evidence from the equity and option markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 79-92.
    67. Elkamhi, Redouane & Ericsson, Jan & Parsons, Christopher A., 2012. "The cost and timing of financial distress," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 62-81.
    68. Titman, Sheridan & Wessels, Roberto, 1988. " The Determinants of Capital Structure Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(1), pages 1-19, March.
    69. John R. Graham, 2000. "How Big Are the Tax Benefits of Debt?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(5), pages 1901-1941, October.
    70. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Whited, Toni M., 2011. "Capital structure dynamics and transitory debt," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 235-261, February.
    71. Kisgen, Darren J., 2009. "Do Firms Target Credit Ratings or Leverage Levels?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(6), pages 1323-1344, December.
    72. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    73. Peter Carr & Liuren Wu, 2009. "Variance Risk Premiums," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 1311-1341, March.
    74. Hull, John C & White, Alan D, 1987. "The Pricing of Options on Assets with Stochastic Volatilities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 281-300, June.
    75. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    76. Flavia Barsotti, 2012. "Optimal Capital Structure with Endogenous Default and Volatility Risk," Working Papers - Mathematical Economics 2012-02, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lotfaliei, Babak, 2018. "Zero leverage and the value in waiting to have debt," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 335-349.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elkamhi, Redouane & Ericsson, Jan & Parsons, Christopher A., 2012. "The cost and timing of financial distress," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 62-81.
    2. Lotfaliei, Babak, 2018. "Zero leverage and the value in waiting to have debt," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 335-349.
    3. Strebulaev, Ilya A. & Whited, Toni M., 2012. "Dynamic Models and Structural Estimation in Corporate Finance," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 6(1–2), pages 1-163, November.
    4. Antill, Samuel & Grenadier, Steven R., 2019. "Optimal capital structure and bankruptcy choice: Dynamic bargaining versus liquidation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 198-224.
    5. Correia, Ricardo & Población, Javier, 2015. "A structural model with Explicit Distress," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 112-130.
    6. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    7. Luca Benzoni & Lorenzo Garlappi & Robert Goldstein, 2023. "Incomplete Information, Debt Issuance, and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 4331-4352, July.
    8. Ban, Mingyuan & Chen, Chang-Chih, 2019. "Ambiguity and capital structure adjustments," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 242-270.
    9. Amini, Shahram & Elmore, Ryan & Öztekin, Özde & Strauss, Jack, 2021. "Can machines learn capital structure dynamics?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Danis, András & Rettl, Daniel A. & Whited, Toni M., 2014. "Refinancing, profitability, and capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(3), pages 424-443.
    11. Liu, Liang-Chih & Dai, Tian-Shyr & Wang, Chuan-Ju, 2016. "Evaluating corporate bonds and analyzing claim holders’ decisions with complex debt structure," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 151-174.
    12. Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2007. "Do Tests of Capital Structure Theory Mean What They Say?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1747-1787, August.
    13. Giorgio Canarella & Stephen M. Miller, 2019. "Determinants of Optimal Capital Structure and Speed of Adjustment: Evidence from the U.S. ICT Sector," Working papers 2019-06, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    14. Amilcar A. Menichini, 2017. "On the value and determinants of the interest tax shields," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 725-748, April.
    15. Erwan Morellec & Boris Nikolov & Norman Schürhoff, 2018. "Agency Conflicts around the World," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(11), pages 4232-4287.
    16. Maclachlan, Iain C, 2007. "An empirical study of corporate bond pricing with unobserved capital structure dynamics," MPRA Paper 28416, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Chen, Chang-Chih & Ho, Kung-Cheng & Yan, Cheng & Yeh, Chung-Ying & Yu, Min-Teh, 2023. "Does ambiguity matter for corporate debt financing? Theory and evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    18. Ramona Westermann, 2018. "Measuring Agency Costs over the Business Cycle," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(12), pages 5748-5768, December.
    19. Pascal Francois, 2006. "Tax loss carry-forwards and optimal leverage," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(14), pages 1075-1083.
    20. Bontempi, Maria Elena & Bottazzi, Laura & Golinelli, Roberto, 2020. "A multilevel index of heterogeneous short-term and long-term debt dynamics," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital structure; optimal leverage; variance risk premium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:srk:srkwps:201870. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esrbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.