IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jfinqa/v33y1998i01p87-116_02.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Loan Commitments and the Debt Overhang Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Snyder, Christopher M.

Abstract

The debt overhang problem is shown to arise in the context of an entrepreneurial project that requires a sequence of investments financed by an outside lender. The entrepreneur, not internalizing losses accruing to the lender which financed the initial investments, may inefficiently cancel the project and instead pursue an outside opportunity. It is shown that loan commitments (contracts that allow the entrepreneur to borrow a variable amount at a set interest rate in return for a fixed fee) are the optimal financial contracts in this setting, strictly dominating standard debt. The existence of the fixed fee allows loan commitments to set a relatively low interest rate, improving the entrepreneur's incentives to continue the project. The paper specifies the optimal contract fully, derives robust comparative statics properties (using an extension of Milgrom and Roberts (1994)), and extends the results to more realistic settings (e.g., allowing the market risk-free rate to be stochastic).

Suggested Citation

  • Snyder, Christopher M., 1998. "Loan Commitments and the Debt Overhang Problem," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(1), pages 87-116, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:33:y:1998:i:01:p:87-116_02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022109000023887/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tsuji, Kenji, 2007. "The soft budget constraint, the debt overhang and the optimal degree of credit centralization," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 187-197, March.
    2. Agatha Nkem Amadi & Isaac Azubuike Ogbuji & Hope Agbonrofo, 2020. "The Maturity and Repayment Structure of Sovereign Debt: Implications for Development Agenda in Nigeria," Academic Journal of Economic Studies, Faculty of Finance, Banking and Accountancy Bucharest,"Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University Bucharest, vol. 6(1), pages 115-120, March.
    3. Christophe Chamley & Céline Rochon, 2011. "From Search to Match: When Loan Contracts Are Too Long," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(s2), pages 385-411, October.
    4. Flores Prieto, Pedro & Fullerton, Thomas M., Jr. & Andrade Olivas, Cesar, 2007. "Evidencia empirica sobre deuda externa, inversion, y crecimiento en Mexico, 1980-2003 [Empirical evidence on foreign debt, investment, and growth in Mexico, 1980-2003]," MPRA Paper 9497, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Apr 2007.

    More about this item

    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:cup:jfinqa:v:33:y:1998:i:01:p:87-116_02. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jfq .

    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.