IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/00119.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Determines Debt Maturity?

Author

Listed:
  • Rodolfo E. Manuelli

Abstract

What determines the maturity structure of debt? In this article, I develop a simple model to explore how the optimal maturity of debt issued by a firm (or a country) depends both on the firm?s cyclical state and other features of the economic environment in which it operates. I find that firms with better current earnings and better growth prospects issue debt with longer maturity, while firms operating in more-volatile environments issue debt with shorter maturity. Yield to maturity is a poor indicator of the risk of debt issued by a firm. The reason is simple: Yield to maturity captures both default risk and a component that is a pseudo term premium. In the model, the market does require a term premium and one appears only because of the risk of default. It is not possible to separate the impact of maturity and risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Rodolfo E. Manuelli, 2019. "What Determines Debt Maturity?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3), pages 155-176.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:00119
    DOI: 10.20955/r.101.155-76
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2019/07/12/full-issue.pdf
    File Function: Issue Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2019/07/12/what-determines-debt-maturity
    File Function: Article Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/r.101.155-76?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    2. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 5.
    3. Sangmin Aum & Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee & Yongseok Shin, 2017. "Industrial and Occupational Employment Changes During the Great Recession," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 99(4), pages 307-317.
    4. Carl Sanders & Christopher Taber, 2012. "Life-Cycle Wage Growth and Heterogeneous Human Capital," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 399-425, July.
    5. Lee, Tim & Shin, Yongseok, 2017. "Horizonatal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy," TSE Working Papers 17-800, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    6. Yongseok Shin & Sang Yoon Lee & Donghoon Lee, 2012. "The Option Value of Human Capital," 2012 Meeting Papers 1033, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee & Yongseok Shin & Donghoon Lee, 2015. "The Option Value of Human Capital: Higher Education and Wage Inequality," NBER Working Papers 21724, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Acemoglu, Daron & Autor, David, 2011. "Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 12, pages 1043-1171, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kim, Hwagyun & Mathur, Vipul & Shin, Jong Kook & Subramanian, Chetan, 2023. "Misallocation of debt and aggregate productivity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    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. Simon Firestone & Amy Lorenc & Ben Ranish, 2019. "An Empirical Economic Assessment of the Costs and Benefits of Bank Capital in the United States," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3).
    2. Jane E. Ihrig & Edward Kim & Cindy M. Vojtech & Gretchen C. Weinbach, 2019. "How Have Banks Been Managing the Composition of High-Quality Liquid Assets?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3).
    3. Yongseok Shin & C. Y. Kelvin Yuen, 2019. "Occupational Mobility and Lifetime Earnings," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3).
    4. Boddin, Dominik & Henze, Philipp, 2015. "International trade and the occupational mix in manufacturing: Evidence from german micro data," Economics Working Papers 2015-05, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    5. Katie Meara & Francesco Pastore & Allan Webster, 2020. "The gender pay gap in the USA: a matching study," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 271-305, January.
    6. repec:wsr:ecbook:2013:i:v-002 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Thanos Fragkandreas, 2022. "Three Decades of Research on Innovation and Inequality: Causal Scenarios, Explanatory Factors, and Suggestions," Working Papers 60, Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management Research, revised Feb 2022.
    8. Vahagn Jerbashian, 2019. "Automation and Job Polarization: On the Decline of Middling Occupations in Europe," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 81(5), pages 1095-1116, October.
    9. Filippos Petroulakis, 2023. "Task Content and Job Losses in the Great Lockdown," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(3), pages 586-613, May.
    10. repec:eur:ejesjr:364 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Hans Gersbach & Jean-Charles Rochet & Martin Scheffel, 2023. "Financial Intermediation, Capital Accumulation, and Crisis Recovery," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 27(4), pages 1423-1469.
    12. Rendall, Michelle & Weiss, Franziska J., 2016. "Employment polarization and the role of the apprenticeship system," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 166-186.
    13. Sudipto Banerjee & David Blau, 2016. "Employment Trends by Age in the United States: Why Are Older Workers Different?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(1), pages 163-199.
    14. Amanda Weinstein & Carlianne Patrick, 2020. "Recession‐proof skills, cities, and resilience in economic downturns," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 348-373, March.
    15. Florian Hoffmann & Thomas Lemieux, 2016. "Unemployment in the Great Recession: A Comparison of Germany, Canada, and the United States," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S1), pages 95-139.
    16. Jeffrey L. Furman & Florenta Teodoridis, 2020. "Automation, Research Technology, and Researchers’ Trajectories: Evidence from Computer Science and Electrical Engineering," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 330-354, March.
    17. Gary Fields & Robert Duval-Hernández & Samuel Freije & María Sánchez Puerta, 2015. "Earnings mobility, inequality, and economic growth in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(1), pages 103-128, March.
    18. Matthias Kehrig & Nicolas Vincent, 2017. "Growing Productivity without Growing Wages: The Micro-Level Anatomy of the Aggregate Labor Share Decline," CESifo Working Paper Series 6454, CESifo.
    19. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer & Michael Peneder & Philipp Piribauer & Peter Reschenhofer, 2018. "Beschäftigungseffekte der Digitalisierung in den Bundesländern sowie in Stadt und Land," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 61633.
    20. repec:eur:ejesjr:361 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Cynthia Armas & Fernando Sánchez-Losada, 2021. "Structural change and the income of nations," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2021/412, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    22. Fabián Slonimczyk, 2013. "Earnings inequality and skill mismatch in the U.S.: 1973–2002," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(2), pages 163-194, June.
    23. Gersbach, Hans & Schmassmann, Samuel, 2019. "Skills, Tasks, and Complexity," IZA Discussion Papers 12770, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    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:fip:fedlrv:00119. 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: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    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.