Essays in Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions

Essays in Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions
Author: Hoang Van Vu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

The evolution of corporate debt markets in recent decades, especially short-term debt facilities and bank debt, has made funding more accessible for corporate borrowers. On the other hand, the changing environment of debt markets also creates new challenges for corporate borrowers. First, as the debt maturity structure has become shorter, companies face higher liquidity pressure. Second, since banks also increasingly rely on short-term wholesale funding, the maturity mismatch of bank assets and liabilities has widened, further increasing economy-wide liquidity risk. These problems were illustrated by the most recent liquidity crisis that lasted from 2007 to 2009. Understanding the implications of borrowing using short-term debt therefore is crucial for the modern corporate finance. Moreover, the issues regarding the maturity mismatch of the banking sector imply that fluctuations in bank credit might increase, as banks become more sensitive to liquidity constraints. This thesis explores a number of issues regarding the use of short-term debt by non-financial companies, as well as the implications of fluctuations in bank credit for corporate financial and investment policies. The thesis contains three empirical research essays, presented individually in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The first essay investigates the implications of debt maturity structure on corporate investment activities in the presence of firm specific default risk. The second and the third essays examine the implications of bank credit cycles on corporate activities. Essay 2 studies the effect of bank credit cycles on firms' choice of external financing issues, whereas Essay 3 examines the effect of bank credit on corporate liquidity management policies and the spending on different types of investment.

Two Essays on Investments

Two Essays on Investments
Author: Jie Zhu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

In my dissertation, I study factors that influence investments from either corporate or institutional perspective. First, I examine the sensitivity of corporate investment to internally generated cash flow and its pattern of change over time across countries. Second, I investigate how a firm's customer profile can shape its ownership structure of institutional investors. Existing studies have documented a puzzling disappearance of investment-cash flow (ICF) sensitivity in the U.S.. In the first chapter, I explore whether economic and financial development can explain the extent of a country's ICF sensitivity and its evolution through time. I find that, in aggregate, ICF sensitivity has also faded around the world; yet it has remained high in countries with low economic and financial development. Further, I find that the access to external finance, especially equity finance, is a key channel through which country-level development affects the sensitivity of investment to internal cash flow. In more developed countries, external finance has become more accessible for firms when their internal cash flow is insufficient, thereby reducing their reliance on internal cash flow. The results indicate that once a country advances to a certain degree of financial and economic development, it becomes more efficient in allocating resources and therefore financial constraints at the individual firm level become less binding. A growing literature has documented different financial implications of a concentrated customer base. In the second chapter, I examine how customer concentration affects institutional investors' investment decisions. I find that a firm's customer concentration tends to attract different groups of institutional investors, depending upon their investment horizons. Specifically, those institutions who trade actively (short-term) would buy the stocks of firms with a more concentrated customer base. Conversely, those institutions who trade less actively (long-term) would buy the stocks of firms with a less concentrated customer base. While the preference of long-term investors is supported by the increased risk associated with the dependency on a few large customers, I find that the improved stock liquidity is the channel through which a concentrated customer base attracts short-term investors. Further, my findings cannot be explained by information transfer along the supply chain.

Corporate Investment Behavior in the Imperfect Capital Market

Corporate Investment Behavior in the Imperfect Capital Market
Author: Sijing Zong
Publisher:
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2006
Genre: Capital market
ISBN:

My dissertation is a study of corporate investment behavior under market imperfections. This dissertation is structured as three inter-related essays that each addresses a particular aspect of the investment behavior of firms and all share common themes which are 1) market imperfections complicate managerial decisions on investments; and 2) the models based on perfect market assumptions may not be correct. The first essay, The relationship between internal cash flow and investments, studies the puzzle of the sensitivity of corporate investments to internal cash flows and finds that a U-shaped sensitivity curve between investment and cash flows can be clearly identified in the U.S. and in most other countries studied. The second essay, The relationship between market valuation and corporate investments, studies the relationship between stock market valuation and firm investments using a model controlling for many market imperfection components and employing simultaneous equations estimates. Essay two finds that both market perceptions and fundamental factors are important influences on corporate investment decisions. Moreover, we document that market valuation has a much higher impact on investment than fundamental variables, which seems to be consistent with the contentions in Barro (1990) and Baker et al. (2003). The third essay, Who will benefit from diversification: a transaction cost view of diversified firms, studies the issue of diversification and using data for a number of countries finds that both firm-level and country-level variables are important determinants of the excess values of diversified firms. We find that country risk, legal system, country disclosure level, information asymmetry measures, and agency cost measures are all important factors that influence diversified firm values. Our findings are largely consistent with those suggested by the transaction cost theory and provide a new perspective for the evaluations of firm diversification. In summary, this dissertation studies the impacts of market imperfections on corporate investment decisions and suggests that when operating in an imperfect market, a firm's investment decision-making process is influenced by cash flows, stock prices, and transactions costs, and is much more complicated than in perfect markets.

Essays on Corporate Investment and Managerial Attribution

Essays on Corporate Investment and Managerial Attribution
Author: Wahib Ghazni
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre: Corporations
ISBN:

The dissertation empirically investigates the role of managerial traits, skill, and biases on corporate investment decisions. The first essay causally explores the impact of Diversity Inclusion and Equity (DEI) in the ranks of executive leadership on corporate intangible capital. Using a machine learning algorithm that is trained on the U.S Census to build a novel database that identifies the ethnicity of all C-Suite Executives. It explores the differentiating dimensions of leadership traits that are brought to the managerial decision-making process by DEI. The findings reveal that minority executives pioneer in building a firm's intangible capital by increasing its innovation output and growing its organizational capital. The second essay shows that the sharp decline in option compensation following SFAS 123R in 2005 has diminished the effectiveness of previous option-based managerial overconfidence measures. Thus, it proposes a new measure of managerial overconfidence: dollars at risk from voluntarily holding vested shares and options. It tests 16 predictions from the literature regarding overconfidence and finds strong evidence validating the proposed measure. The third and last essay lends empirical support to the premise that boards consider dynamic CEO performance to make their estimates about true CEO skill. It expands the focus of the relative performance evaluation from studying the relationship of CEO pay and turnover with contemporaneous skill performance to including persistent skill. Its findings show that boards do consider dynamic skill performance in their assessment of managerial skill and that persistent skill is associated with higher pay and a lower probability of turnover.

Essays in Corporate Finance

Essays in Corporate Finance
Author: Pavel Zryumov
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis studies the investment and financing decisions of firms in dynamic markets with asymmetric information. In the first chapter I analyze the effects of time-varying market conditions and endogenous entry on the equilibrium dynamics of markets plagued by adverse selection. I show that variation in gains from trade, stemming from market conditions, creates an option value and distorts liquidity when gains from trade are low. An improvement in market conditions triggers a wave of high-quality deals due to the preceding illiquidity and lack of incentives to signal quality. When gains from trade are high, the market is fully liquid; high prices and no delay in trade attract low-grade assets, and the average quality deteriorates. My analysis also reveals that illiquidity can act as a remedy as well as a cause of inefficiency: partial illiquidity allows for screening of assets and restores efficient entry incentives. I demonstrate model implications using several applications: early stage financing, initial public offerings, and private equity buyouts. Chapter 2, which is a joint work with Ilya Strebulaev and Haoxiang Zhu, reexamines the classic yet static information asymmetry model of Myers and Majluf (1984) in a fully dynamic market. A firm has access to an investment project and can finance it by debt or equity. The market learns the quality of the firm over time by observing cash flows generated by the firm's assets in place. In the dynamic equilibrium, the firm optimally delays investment, but investment eventually takes place. In a ``two-threshold'' equilibrium, a high-quality firm invests only if the market's belief goes above an optimal upper threshold, while a low-quality firm invests if the market's belief goes above the upper threshold or below a lower threshold. However, a different ``four-threshold'' equilibrium can emerge if cash flows are sufficiently volatile. Relatively risky growth options are optimally financed with equity, whereas relatively safe projects are financed with debt, in line with stylized facts. Finally, Chapter 3, which is based on an ongoing work with Ilya Strebulaev and Haoxiang Zhu, extends the analysis of Chapter 2 by allowing cash accumulation within the firm. We consider a firm whose managers possess superior information about the firm's value relative to the rest of the market and analyze the optimal timing of equity issuance. We show that equilibrium features socially inefficient, but privately optimal, delay of investment and equity financing of positive NPV projects. Waiting allows high quality firms to accumulate internal cash and increase investors' beliefs, therefore, reducing the cost of adverse selection. In the dynamic equilibrium low quality firms delay investment as well in hope of being mistaken for the high quality ones. However, when market beliefs are sufficiently low and/or internally accumulated level of cash is sufficiently high the low quality firm prefers to reveal itself.

Essays on Corporate Finance

Essays on Corporate Finance
Author: David Alan Crane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2010
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation addresses issues in corporate finance. Part I examines the litigation environment of a firm and its impact on financial policy. Chapter 1 discusses prior research, including theory and empirical results, related to firm performance, financial policy, and litigation. It provides the background to support the empirical analyses of Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 examines the wealth effects of litigation events on the firms involved, as well as on their industry peers. I find that litigation events have a strong negative effect on both the firms sued, as well as their competitors. Chapter 3 examines whether managers use financial policy strategically when facing an increased risk of litigation claims. I find that greater litigation exposure leads firms to choose higher leverage. I show that this leverage increase is brought on by an active decision to repurchase shares. These repurchases appear to be financed with a combination of excess cash and short term debt as they coincide with a significant decrease in cash holdings and an increase in short term liabilities. These firms also increase their use of operating leases, which, due to their priority in bankruptcy, have similar characteristics as secured debt. Finally, the effects seem to be stronger for firms with a higher probability of bankruptcy. Part II asks whether there is a disposition effect in corporate investment decisions. Chapter 4 provides a summary of the existing literature related to the disposition effect and discusses both theoretical and empirical findings. In Chapter 5, I utilize the unique nature of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to test for the presence of the disposition effect in corporate investments. The results show strong statistical evidence that REIT managers tend to sell winners and hold losers, where winners and losers are defined using changes in properties' prices since they were acquired. In addition, I find evidence that this behavior is consistent with the disposition effect. REIT managers are significantly less likely to sell properties that have a loss relative to a reference point based on inflation or historical average returns, controlling for the properties' recent returns.