Financial Decision (financial + decision)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Interdependent and Intertemporal Nature of Financial Decisions: An Application to Cash Flow Sensitivities

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 2 2010
VLADIMIR A. GATCHEV
ABSTRACT We develop a dynamic multiequation model where firms make financing and investment decisions jointly subject to the constraint that sources must equal uses of cash. We argue that static models of financial decisions produce inconsistent coefficient estimates, and that models that do not acknowledge the interdependence among decision variables produce inefficient estimates and provide an incomplete and potentially misleading view of financial behavior. We use our model to examine whether firms are constrained from accessing capital markets. Unlike static single-equation studies that find firms underinvest given cash flow shortfalls, we conclude that firms maintain investment by borrowing. [source]


Moral Hazard Contracting and Private Credit Markets

ECONOMETRICA, Issue 3 2004
In-Uck Park
This paper studies the impact of credit markets on optimal contracting, when the agent's "interim preference" over upcoming contracts is private information because personal financial decisions affect it via the wealth effect. The main result is a severe loss of incentive provision: equilibrium contracts invariably cause the agent to shirk (i.e., exert minimal effort) if the agent's private financial decision precedes moral hazard contracting. The basic intuition is that committing on another private variable, other than the effort level, exposes the parties to further exploitation of efficient risk-sharing by relaxing the incentive constraint that was binding ex ante, unless the risk-sharing was fully efficient to begin with. [source]


Who Withdraws Housing Equity and Why?

ECONOMICA, Issue 301 2009
ANDREW BENITO
The decision to extract home equity is examined using household-level data for the UK over 1993,2003. At its peak during the period, around 1-in-10 homeowners withdraw equity per year. Little is known about this financial decision. I find that the equity withdrawal decision conforms to predictions from the standard life-cycle framework and models that predict its use as a financial buffer. The paper also estimates responses to the large house price appreciation and significant reductions in mortgage rates seen during the period. [source]


How To Choose a Capital Structure: Navigating the Debt-Equity Decision

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 1 2005
Anil Shivdasani
In corporate offices as well as the classroom, there continues to be significant debate about the costs and benefits of debt financing. There is also considerable variation in corporate credit ratings, even among companies as large and successful as those that make up the S&P 500. Many companies have been reassessing how they manage their balance sheet and their rating agency relationships; and with the market's generally favorable response to recapitalizations and dividend increases, such financing issues are likely to receive even more attention. Underlying the diversity of corporate credit ratings is widespread disagreement about the "right" credit rating,a matter that is complicated by the fact that the cost of debt varies widely among companies with the same rating. Although credit ratings are clearly tied to measures of indebtedness such as leverage and coverage ratios, the most important factor in most industries is a company's size. For many mid-sized companies, an investment-grade rating can be attained only by making a large, equity-financed acquisition,or by making minimal use of debt. In this sense, the corporate choice of credit rating can be as much a strategic issue as a financial decision. Maintaining the right amount of financial fl exibility is a key consideration when determining the right credit rating for a given company (although what management views as value-preserving flexibility may be viewed by the market as value-reducing financial "slack"). A BBB rating will accommodate considerably more leverage (30,60%) in companies with fairly stable cash flows and limited investment requirements than in more cyclical or growth-oriented companies (10,20%). When contemplating taking on more leverage, companies should examine all major operating risks and view their capital structure in the context of an enterprisewide risk management framework. [source]


ON THE PREFERENCES OF PRINCIPALS AND AGENTS

ECONOMIC INQUIRY, Issue 2 2010
MARCO CASTILLO
One of the reasons why market economies are able to thrive is that they exploit the willingness of entrepreneurs to take risks that laborers might prefer to avoid. Markets work because they remunerate good judgment and punish mistakes. Indeed, modern contract theory is based on the assumption that principals are less risk averse than agents. We investigate if the risk preferences of entrepreneurs are different from those of laborers by implementing experiments with a random sample of the population in a fast-growing, small-manufacturing, economic cluster. As assumed by theory, we find that entrepreneurs are more likely to take risks than hired managers. These results are robust to the inclusion of a series of controls. This lends support to the idea that risk preferences is an important determinant of selection into occupations. Finally, our lotteries are good predictors of financial decisions, thus giving support to the external validity of our risk measures and experimental methods (JEL C93, D81, D86). [source]


The relevance of MCDM for financial decisions

JOURNAL OF MULTI CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS, Issue 4-5 2002
Winfried G. Hallerbach
Abstract For people working in finance, either in academia or in practice or in both, the combination of ,finance' and ,multiple criteria' is not obvious. However, we believe that many of the tools developed in the field of MCDM can contribute both to the quality of the financial economic decision making process and to the quality of the resulting decisions. In this paper we answer the question why financial decision problems should be considered as multiple criteria decision problems and should be treated accordingly. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The Interdependent and Intertemporal Nature of Financial Decisions: An Application to Cash Flow Sensitivities

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 2 2010
VLADIMIR A. GATCHEV
ABSTRACT We develop a dynamic multiequation model where firms make financing and investment decisions jointly subject to the constraint that sources must equal uses of cash. We argue that static models of financial decisions produce inconsistent coefficient estimates, and that models that do not acknowledge the interdependence among decision variables produce inefficient estimates and provide an incomplete and potentially misleading view of financial behavior. We use our model to examine whether firms are constrained from accessing capital markets. Unlike static single-equation studies that find firms underinvest given cash flow shortfalls, we conclude that firms maintain investment by borrowing. [source]