Struttura finanziaria, seniority rules del debito e decisioni di investimento delle imprese

The uncertainty surrounding investment return is at the basis of the financial structure of both the firm and the project. This structure, in turn, may give origin to conflicts of interest between stockholders and bondholders with ensuing suboptimal investment decisions. The resulting deadweight losses, known as agency costs of debt, arise because different types of "stake-holders", under different conditions and expected payoffs, agree to share the risks involved in the operation of the firm. The model provides a simple framework in which the firm's investment decisions are related to the degree of seniorship of the claims. It shows that, in general, wealth tranfers between claimholders and "financial externalities" give rise to incentives for the shareholders to over- as well under-invest in almost all circumstances. By contrast, it also shows how perverse investment incentives can be reduced by a seniority rule that equates the expected return to debtholders in the default state to the project cash flow in the same state (i.e. project financing). The empirical results confirm i) the presence of over-investment incentives in a sample of Italian firm and ii) the hypothesis that the shareholders "over-investment incentives" depends on both the degree of seniorship of the claims and the expected returns of the project.