Debt Signaling and Outside Investors in Early Stage Firms

Martí Guasch and Mircea Epure

No 941, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: By imposing a market like governance and directing entrepreneurs towards professional management, debt, and especially business debt, can serve as a reliable signal for outside equity investors. Such signals of firm accountability can alleviate the stringent information asymmetry at the early stages of the firm, and become stronger for bank business debt, in the presence of personal debt, and in high capital industries. Using the Kauffman Firm Survey, we find evidence consistent with our hypotheses. Outside investors can rely on the governance role of debt and its underpinnings such as the bank-firm relationship. We also corroborate that young firms tend to focus on growth rather than profitability.

Keywords: governance; entrepreneurship; financing; information asymmetry; debt; equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 M13 M40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cfn, nep-ent and nep-sbm
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Related works:
Journal Article: Debt signaling and outside investors in early stage firms (2020)
Working Paper: Debt signaling and outside investors in early stage firms (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:941

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