IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jfinqa/v20y1985i04p479-499_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Debt Policy and the Rate of Return Premium to Leverage

Author

Listed:
  • Kane, Alex
  • Marcus, Alan J.
  • McDonald, Robert L.

Abstract

Equilibrium in the market for real assets requires that the price of those assets be bid up to reflect the tax shields they can offer to levered firms. Thus, there must be an equality between the market values of real assets and the values of optimally levered firms. The standard measure of the advantage to leverage compares the values of levered and unlevered assets, and can be misleading and difficult to interpret. We show that a meaningful measure of the advantage to debt is the extra rate of return, net of a market premium for bankruptcy risk, earned by a levered firm relative to an otherwise-identical unlevered firm. We construct an option valuation model to calculate such a measure and present extensive simulation results. We use this model to compute optimal debt maturities, show how this approach can be used for capital budgeting, and discuss its implications for the comparison of bankruptcy costs versus tax shields.

Suggested Citation

  • Kane, Alex & Marcus, Alan J. & McDonald, Robert L., 1985. "Debt Policy and the Rate of Return Premium to Leverage," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(4), pages 479-499, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:20:y:1985:i:04:p:479-499_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022109000011832/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Galai, Dan & Masulis, Ronald W., 1976. "The option pricing model and the risk factor of stock," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 53-81.
    2. Myers, Stewart C, 1974. "Interactions of Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions-Implications for Capital Budgeting," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(1), pages 1-25, March.
    3. Kane, Alex & Marcus, Alan J & McDonald, Robert L, 1984. "How Big Is the Tax Advantage to Debt?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 841-853, July.
    4. Kim, E Han, 1978. "A Mean-Variance Theory of Optimal Capital Structure and Corporate Debt Capacity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 45-63, March.
    5. Merton, Robert C., 1977. "On the pricing of contingent claims and the Modigliani-Miller theorem," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 241-249, November.
    6. James H. Scott Jr., 1976. "A Theory of Optimal Capital Structure," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(1), pages 33-54, Spring.
    7. Brennan, Michael J & Schwartz, Edwardo S, 1978. "Corporate Income Taxes, Valuation, and the Problem of Optimal Capital Structure," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 103-114, January.
    8. Constantinides, George M, 1978. "Market Risk Adjustment in Project Valuation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(2), pages 603-616, May.
    9. Turnbull, Stuart M, 1979. "Debt Capacity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 34(4), pages 931-940, September.
    10. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    11. McDonald, Robert & Siegel, Daniel, 1984. "Option Pricing When the Underlying Asset Earns a Below-Equilibrium Rate of Return: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(1), pages 261-265, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kane, Alex & Marcus, Alan J & McDonald, Robert L, 1984. "How Big Is the Tax Advantage to Debt?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 841-853, July.
    2. Lund, Diderik, 2009. "Marginal versus Average Beta of Equity under Corporate Taxation," Memorandum 12/2009, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    3. Broll, Udo & Wong, Keith K.P., 2010. "The firm under uncertainty: capital structure and background risk," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 04/10, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    4. Broll, Udo & Wong, Kit Pong, 2003. "Capital structure and the firm under uncertainty," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 20/03, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    5. T. Pham & D. Chow, 1989. "Some Estimates of Direct and Indirect Bankruptcy Costs in Australia: September 1978–May 1983," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 14(1), pages 75-95, June.
    6. Forte, Santiago, 2004. "Capital structure: optimal leverage and maturity choice in a dynamic model," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb041206, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    7. Cardone Riportella, Clara & Casasola, María José, 2003. "What do we know about the financial behaviour of the Spanish SME?: an empirical analysis," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb033708, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    8. Drobetz, Wolfgang & Pensa, Pascal & Wöhle, Claudia B., 2004. "Kapitalstrukturtheorie in Theorie und Praxis: Ergebnisse einer Fragebogenuntersuchung," Working papers 2004/09, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    9. Monda, Barbara & Giorgino, Marco & Modolin, Ileana, 2013. "Rationales for Corporate Risk Management - A Critical Literature Review," MPRA Paper 45420, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Sanjiva Prasad & Christopher J. Green & Victor Murinde, 2005. "Company Financial Structure: A Survey and Implications for Developing Economies," Chapters, in: Christopher J. Green & Colin Kirkpatrick & Victor Murinde (ed.), Finance and Development, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Lund, Diderik, 2006. "Taxation and systematic risk under decreasing returns to scale," Working Papers 02-2003, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    12. Wald, John, 1999. "Capital structure with dividend restrictions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 193-208, June.
    13. John K. Wald, 1999. "How Firm Characteristics Affect Capital Structure: An International Comparison," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 22(2), pages 161-187, June.
    14. Austin J. Jaffe & C. F. Sirmans, 1984. "The Theory and Evidence on Real Estate Financial Decisions: A Review of the Issues," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 12(3), pages 378-400, September.
    15. Hayne E. Leland., 1998. "Agency Costs, Risk Management, and Capital Structure," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-278, University of California at Berkeley.
    16. Peter Brusov & Tatiana Filatova, 2023. "Capital Structure Theory: Past, Present, Future," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-30, January.
    17. Augusto Castillo, 2004. "The announcement effect of bond and equity issues: evidence from Chile," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 31(2 Year 20), pages 177-205, December.
    18. Rao Ramesh K. S. & Stevens Eric C, 2006. "The Firm's Cost of Capital, Its Effective Marginal Tax Rate, and the Value of the Government's Tax Claim," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-57, January.
    19. Pascal Francois, 2006. "Tax loss carry-forwards and optimal leverage," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(14), pages 1075-1083.
    20. Viswanath, P. V. & Frierman, Mike, 1995. "Asset fungibility and equilibrium capital structures," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 319-334, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:20:y:1985:i:04:p:479-499_01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jfq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.