The effects of business cycle and debt maturity on a firm's investment and default decisions

Haejun Jeon and Michi Nishihara

International Review of Economics & Finance, 2015, vol. 38, issue C, 326-351

Abstract: We propose a model that jointly determines the capital structure and investment decisions taking business cycle and debt maturity into account. It endogenously determines the triggers of investment/disinvestment and default, which depend on the state of the economy. The investment triggers can be unimodal or bimodal with respect to debt maturity depending on the volatility of the growth opportunities. The optimal leverage ratio tends to increase as recession shortens, which induces higher yield spreads for short-term debt; but long-term debt is more affected by increase of expected cash flow, and thus the yield spreads decrease.

Keywords: Optimal switching; Markov chain; Real options; Debt maturity; Business cycle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 G32 G33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105905601500060X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:38:y:2015:i:c:p:326-351

DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2015.02.031

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen

More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().