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Working Paper
Debt Dynamics with Fixed Issuance Costs
We investigate equilibrium debt dynamics for a firm that cannot commit to a future debt policy and is subject to a fixed restructuring cost. We formally characterize equilibria when the firm is not required to repurchase outstanding debt prior to issuing additional debt. For realistic values of issuance costs and debt maturity, the no-commitment policy generates tax benefits that are similar to those obtained by a benchmark policy with commitment. For positive but arbitrarily small issuance costs, there are maturities for which shareholders extract essentially the entire claim to cash-flows.
Working Paper
COVID-19: fiscal implications and financial stability in developing countries
The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike any other crisis that we have experienced in that it hit all economies in the world at the same time, compromising the risk sharing ability of nations. At the onset of the pandemic, the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) jointly pledged 1.16 trillion dollars to help emerging economies deal with COVID-19. Would this amount have been enough to preserve financial stability in a worst case scenario? What were the fiscal implications of the pandemic? In this paper we aim to answer these questions by documenting the size of the fiscal measures ...
Working Paper
Debt Maturity and Commitment on Firm Policies
If firms can issue debt only at discrete dates, debt maturity is an effective device against the commitment problem on debt and investment policies. With shorter maturities, debt dynamics are less persistent and more valuable because upward leverage adjustments are faster and long-run leverage lower. Debt maturities that are relatively shorter than asset maturities increase marginal q, and reduce underinvestment. A decomposition of the credit spread consistent with equilibrium shows that the component due to the commitment problem on future debt issuances is sizeable when leverage and default ...
Working Paper
Long-Term Finance and Investment with Frictional Asset Markets
Trading frictions in financial markets affect more long- than short-term bonds generating an upward sloping yield curve. Long-term financing is more expensive in economies with higher trading frictions so firms choose to borrow and invest in shorter horizons and lower productivity projects. The theory guides a new identification of the slope of liquidity spread in the data. We measure and calibrate the model for the US, and counterfactual exercises suggest that variations in trading frictions can have significant effects on maturity choices and investment. A policy intervention improves ...
Working Paper
A Model of Endogenous Debt Maturity with Heterogeneous Beliefs
This paper studies optimal debt maturity in an economy with repayment enforcement frictions and investors disagree about repayment probabilities. The optimal debt maturity choice is a mix of long- and short-term debt securities. Spreading risky debt claims on cash flows over time allows debt to be priced by investors most willing to hold risk at each point in time, thereby increasing investment and output. By contrast, a single maturity, either all long- or short-term, will be priced by investors less willing to hold risk, which reduces investment and output. The model provides a novel ...