Capital Structure Over The Business Cycle

David Amdur

Working Papers from Georgetown University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Why are aggregate equity payouts and debt issued positively correlated over the business cycle in U.S. data? Standard real business cycle (RBC) models have few predictions about capital structure, because they assume that financial markets are frictionless. On the other hand, the tradeoff theory of capital structure argues that financial frictions determine firms' optimal mix of debt and equity financing. We develop an RBC model with financial frictions and use it to explain some stylized facts about aggregate U.S. debt and equity flows. We document that debt issued and equity payouts are (i) positively correlated with output, (ii) positively correlated with investment, and (iii) positively correlated with each other. Our model can account for these stylized facts. We also calibrate the model to the periods 1952 - 1983 and 1984 - 2007 in order to explain the finding that real variables have become less volatile in the later subperiod, while financial variables have become more volatile. By varying both the scale of technology shocks and the degree of financial frictions, we are able to account for both results.

Keywords: Debt-equity finance; RBC models; business cycle moderation; corporate finance; capital structure; tradeoff theory; payout policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 G32 G35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-08-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dge, nep-fdg and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/economics/pdf/803.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
None

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:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~08-08-03

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Roger Lagunoff Professor of Economics Georgetown University Department of Economics Washington, DC 20057-1036
http://econ.georgetown.edu/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Georgetown University, Department of Economics Georgetown University Department of Economics Washington, DC 20057-1036.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marcia Suss ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).