Essays in financial economics

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2018.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Green, Daniel (Daniel Weiss)
Other Authors: Jonathan Parker.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118000
_version_ 1811072030394548224
author Green, Daniel (Daniel Weiss)
author2 Jonathan Parker.
author_facet Jonathan Parker.
Green, Daniel (Daniel Weiss)
author_sort Green, Daniel (Daniel Weiss)
collection MIT
description Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2018.
first_indexed 2024-09-23T08:59:47Z
format Thesis
id mit-1721.1/118000
institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology
language eng
last_indexed 2024-09-23T08:59:47Z
publishDate 2018
publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology
record_format dspace
spelling mit-1721.1/1180002019-04-10T20:08:44Z Essays in financial economics Green, Daniel (Daniel Weiss) Jonathan Parker. Sloan School of Management. Sloan School of Management. Sloan School of Management. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2018. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references. The essays in this thesis study issues in finance affecting large corporations, developing economies, and households. The common theme that connects these essays is a focus on how financial institutions, frictions, and policies affect the allocation of resources in the economy. The first chapter explores a classic question in corporate finance: how valuable are restrictive debt covenants in reducing the agency costs of debt? I answer this question by exploiting the revealed preference decision to refinance fixed-coupon debt, which weighs observable interest rate savings against the unobservable costs of a change in restrictive debt covenants induced by refinancing. Plausibly exogenous variation in this trade-off reveals that firms require higher interest rate savings to refinance when it would add restrictive covenants and require much lower interest rate savings when refinancing sheds covenants. A high-yield bond's restrictive covenant package increases the value of speculative-grade firms by 2.4 percent on average. Joint work with Ernest Liu in Chapter 2 provides a theory that explains how institutional weakness in credit markets can fail to stimulate development even when there is ample credit supply. We show that when borrowers lack credible mechanisms to commit not to borrow further from other lenders in the future, not only does the increasing availability of lenders raise the interest rate on loans and reduce the amount of funds that entrepreneurs can borrow, but perversely it is those entrepreneurs with more profitable investment opportunities that will end up raising fewer investments precisely because they have stronger desires to seek out additional lenders in the future. This effect further discourages entrepreneurs from initiating the most efficient and productive endeavors, generating persistent underdevelopment. Chapter 3 explores the role of liquidity constraints in households' responses to fiscal stimulus programs. In joint work with Jonathan Parker, Brian Melzer, and Arcenis Rojas, this chapter evaluates the impact of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) on vehicle purchases. We find that the liquidity provided by CARS amplified household responses to the economic subsidy. Liquidity provision was lower for the owners of clunkers encumbered by loans, since participation required loan repayment. Such households had a very low participation rate, which we attribute to liquidity constraints and distinguish from the effects of other indebtedness, household income, and the size of the program subsidy. by Daniel Green. 1. Corporate Refinancing, Covenants, and the Agency Cost of Debt -- 2. Growing Pains in Financial Development: Institutional Weakness and Investment Efficiency -- 3. Accelerator or Brake? Cash for Clunkers, Household Liquidity, and Aggregate Demand. Ph. D. 2018-09-17T15:53:17Z 2018-09-17T15:53:17Z 2018 2018 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118000 1051300173 eng MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 190 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Sloan School of Management.
Green, Daniel (Daniel Weiss)
Essays in financial economics
title Essays in financial economics
title_full Essays in financial economics
title_fullStr Essays in financial economics
title_full_unstemmed Essays in financial economics
title_short Essays in financial economics
title_sort essays in financial economics
topic Sloan School of Management.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118000
work_keys_str_mv AT greendanieldanielweiss essaysinfinancialeconomics