Presidential Address: Collateral and Commitment

Peter DeMarzo

Journal of Finance, 2019, vol. 74, issue 4, 1587-1619

Abstract: Optimal dynamic capital structure choice is fundamentally a problem of commitment. In a standard trade‐off setting with shareholder‐debtholder agency conflicts, full commitment counterfactually predicts the firm would rely almost exclusively on debt financing. Conversely, absent commitment a Modigliani‐Miller‐like value irrelevance and policy indeterminacy result holds. Thus, the content of dynamic trade‐off theory must depend on the commitment technology. In this context, collateral is valuable as a low‐cost commitment device. Because ex ante optimal commitments are likely to be suboptimal ex post, observed capital structure dynamics will exhibit hysteresis and depart significantly from standard predictions.

Date: 2019
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