IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1522.html

Valuing Financial Flexibility

Author

Listed:
  • Scott P. Mason

Abstract

Two facts that corporations, underwriters and investors have been forced to confront are increased capital market volatility and increased complexity in the design of securities. However, these two facts, increased volatility and increased complexity, are not unrelated. Virtually all of the complexity in securities can be viewed as the inclusion of different options in a straight debt contract. Given the fact that the value of options is driven most significantly by volatility, the advantage of including options, i.e. financial flexibility, in securities has increased with increased market volatility. This would appear to explain why corporate issuers and institutional investors have shown substantial interest in securities which improve their flexibility in volatile markets. Therefore, techniques which can consistently reflect the role of volatility in the value of options or flexibility, should be of interest to issuers, underwriters, and investors.This paper summarizes the results of some research by Jones, Masonand Rosenfeld (MR), (1984), and presents some new results, which test the ability of a CCA model based on Black and Scholes' option pricingprinciples to predict the market price of callable corporate debt, andtherefore, the price of such common debt covenants as call provisions andcall protection, In addition, some numerical CCA results are reportedwhich demonstrate the impact of changing interest rate volatility on the value of call provisions and call protection.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott P. Mason, 1984. "Valuing Financial Flexibility," NBER Working Papers 1522, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1522
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1522.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Van Landschoot, Astrid, 2004. "Determinants of euro term structure of credit spreads," Working Paper Series 397, European Central Bank.
    2. Correia, Ricardo & Población, Javier, 2015. "A structural model with Explicit Distress," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 112-130.
    3. Jobst, Andreas A., 2014. "Measuring systemic risk-adjusted liquidity (SRL)—A model approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 270-287.
    4. Kanak Patel & Ricardo Pereira, 2007. "Expected Default Probabilities in Structural Models: Empirical Evidence," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 107-133, January.
    5. Nan Chen & S. G. Kou, 2009. "Credit Spreads, Optimal Capital Structure, And Implied Volatility With Endogenous Default And Jump Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 343-378, July.
    6. Hilscher, Jens, 2007. "Is the corporate bond market forward looking?," Working Paper Series 800, European Central Bank.
    7. Dionne, Georges & Laajimi, Sadok, 2012. "On the determinants of the implied default barrier," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 395-408.
    8. Eberhart, Allan C., 2005. "A comparison of Merton's option pricing model of corporate debt valuation to the use of book values," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-2), pages 401-426, March.
    9. Zhou, Chunsheng, 2001. "The term structure of credit spreads with jump risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(11), pages 2015-2040, November.
    10. Bruche, Max, 2003. "Corporate bond prices and co-ordination failure," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24825, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Paul Kupiec, 2007. "Financial stability and Basel II," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 107-130, January.
    12. SHAH, Syed Muhammad Noaman Ahmed & KEBEWAR, mazen, 2013. "US Corporate Bond Yield Spread: A default risk debate," MPRA Paper 44887, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Wang, Hao & Zhou, Hao & Zhou, Yi, 2013. "Credit default swap spreads and variance risk premia," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 3733-3746.
    14. Marques, Manuel O. & Pinto, João M., 2020. "A comparative analysis of ex ante credit spreads: Structured finance versus straight debt finance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    15. Nijskens, Rob & Mokas, Dimitris, 2019. "Credit Risk in Commercial Real Estate Bank Loans : The Role of Idiosyncratic versus Macro-Economic Factors," Other publications TiSEM ea4f2f0e-dc50-4987-91d3-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Okimoto, Tatsuyoshi & Takaoka, Sumiko, 2020. "No-arbitrage determinants of credit spread curves under the unconventional monetary policy regime in Japan," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    17. 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.
    18. Klaus Duellmann & Jonathan Küll & Michael Kunisch, 2010. "Estimating asset correlations from stock prices or default rates - which method is superior?," Post-Print hal-00736734, HAL.
    19. Lara Cathcart & Lina El-Jahel, 2006. "Pricing defaultable bonds: a middle-way approach between structural and reduced-form models," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 243-253.
    20. Mella-Barral, Pierre, 1996. "The dynamics of default and debt reorganization," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119173, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    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:nbr:nberwo:1522. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.