Narrow Results

Using a panel data of listed companies, this paper studies how internal financing and external financing affect the innovative investment of Chinese industrial enterprises. It finds that internal fund is the primary source of financing for the innovative investment undertaken by Chinese nonfinancial firms and the role of external financing varies in the ownership structure of the firm. We find that for the centrally controlled State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), bank loans is an important secondary source of financing for innovation, while for both local SOEs and listed non-SOEs bank loans are not important. External smoothing mechanisms also vary across types of ownership structure. We find that central SOEs mainly use bank loans to buffer against negative shocks to internal funds, while both local SOEs and listed non-SOEs use equity financing from the stock market for the same purpose. Our study shows that it is the accumulation of internal fund, rather than the development of formal financial sector, that contributes to the rapid growth of total innovative investment of Chinese firms.

We analyze the real option signaling game models of debt financing of a risky project under information asymmetry, where the firm quality is only known to the firm management but not outsiders. The firm decides on the optimal investment timing of the risky project that requires upfront fixed funding cost and subsequent operating costs. The fixed funding cost is financed via either direct bank loan or entering into a three-party equity guarantee swap (EGS) that involves a bank granting the loan and third party guarantor. Under the EGS agreement, the guarantor is obligated to pay all the future coupon stream to the bank upon default of the firm. In return for the provision of the guarantee, the guarantor obtains certain proportional share of equity of the firm at the time when the swap agreement is signed. The share of equity demanded by the guarantor depends on the outside investors’ belief on the firm quality. The low-type firm has the incentive to mimic the investment strategy of being high-type in terms of investment timing and share of equity. The high-type firm may adopt the appropriate separating strategy by speeding up investment or choosing an alternative financing choice. The resulting loss of the real option value of the investment opportunity represents the information cost under separating strategies. We examine the incentive compatibility constraints faced by the firm under different quality types and discuss characterization of the separating and pooling equilibriums. Unlike the usual assumption of perpetuity of investment opportunity, our real option model assumes the time window of the investment opportunity to be finite. We explore how the information cost and nature of separating and pooling equilibriums evolves over the finite time span of the investment opportunity. The information costs and investment thresholds exhibit interesting time-dependent behaviors. We examine the firm’s investment and financing choice between EGS and the direct bank loan against time and other parameters via comparison of the corresponding information costs and investment thresholds.

We compare valuation effects associated with debt issuance under SEC Rule 144A versus issuance in the public market. We find that nonconvertible debt Rule 144A issuers experience an incremental positive announcement effect when compared to their counterparts issuing in the public market. We attribute this to the timing of issuance under favorable market conditions and a reduction in informational asymmetry due to lender specialization. When compared to their public counterparts, convertible Rule 144A bond issuers often experience negative announcement effects and inferior post-issuance stock performance. We argue that this negative market reaction arises from a stronger opportunistic market-timing signal.

Generally, crisis situations entail economic hardship for entrepreneurs and their businesses. As such, historical crisis events may be accompanied by government policy to lessen the adverse effects for business owners and their employees. By analyzing a sample of 139,006 U.S. businesses that received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans of $150,000 or more from the United States Treasury, we empirically show that female, racial and ethnic minority business owners will be at a disadvantage in receiving loan forgiveness relative to their peers. These findings advance the literature by highlighting post funding gender, racial and ethnic disparities in accessing venture resources. Practically, the results highlight how governmental intervention during a historical shock may disproportionately increase constraints on female, racial and ethnic minority business owners.

This paper investigates firm values and investment strategies (investment, coupon, and default timing) when several firms make strategic real investments with debt financing. We derive and compare the equilibrium investment strategies in three types of duopolies: (i) two symmetric firms, both of which can issue debt, (ii) two symmetric firms, only one of which (the leader) can issue debt, and (iii) a levered firm versus an unlevered firm. We show that in (iii) and in equilibrium, the levered firm always invests prior to the unlevered firm. Further, we derive the equilibrium in a oligopoly of n levered firms, and show that social loss increases as the number of the firms, n, becomes larger.