Macroeconomic conditions, financial constraints, and firms’ financing decisions

We examine how time-varying macroeconomic conditions affect firms’ financing decisions. A principal components decomposition of several macroeconomic variables characterizes three phases of the business cycle relative to recessions: early recovery, robust recovery, and economic crest; a fourth repre...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Main Authors: Chang, Xin, Chen, Yunling, Dasgupta, Sudipto
Outros Autores: Nanyang Business School
Formato: Journal Article
Idioma:English
Publicado em: 2019
Assuntos:
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/103277
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/48010
Descrição
Resumo:We examine how time-varying macroeconomic conditions affect firms’ financing decisions. A principal components decomposition of several macroeconomic variables characterizes three phases of the business cycle relative to recessions: early recovery, robust recovery, and economic crest; a fourth represents “windows of opportunity” in capital markets that are unrelated to recessions. This characterization yields results that traditional approaches miss. Specifically, debt issuance exhibits a non-monotonic pattern during the upward phase of the business cycle: it declines in robust recovery relative to recessions but peaks at the economic crest. Financially constrained firms issue more equity during windows of high stock market valuation, whereas unconstrained firms time debt issuance in response to debt market spreads.