IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joecth/v31y2007i3p553-572.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liquidity and Liquidation

Author

Listed:
  • David Kelly
  • Stephen LeRoy

Abstract

The manager of a firm that is selling an illiquid asset has discretion as to the sale price: if he chooses a high (low) selling price, early sale is unlikely (likely). If the manager has the option to default on the debt that is collaterized by the illiquid asset, the optimal selling price depends on whether the manager acts in the interest of the owners or the creditors. We model the former case. In the preferred equilibrium, the owner will always offer the illiquid asset for sale at a strictly higher price than he paid, and he will always default if he fails to sell. As a result, the illiquid asset changes hands at successively higher prices; the price inflation terminates upon the first failure to sell, which results in a default chain.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • David Kelly & Stephen LeRoy, 2007. "Liquidity and Liquidation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 31(3), pages 553-572, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:31:y:2007:i:3:p:553-572
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-006-0113-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00199-006-0113-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00199-006-0113-7?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1992. "Liquidation Values and Debt Capacity: A Market Equilibrium Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1343-1366, September.
    2. John G. Riley & Richard Zeckhauser, 1980. "Optimal Selling Strategies:," UCLA Economics Working Papers 180, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Krainer, John, 2001. "A Theory of Liquidity in Residential Real Estate Markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 32-53, January.
    4. Milgrom, Paul & Shannon, Chris, 1994. "Monotone Comparative Statics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(1), pages 157-180, January.
    5. Haugen, Robert A & Senbet, Lemma W, 1978. "The Insignificance of Bankruptcy Costs to the Theory of Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(2), pages 383-393, May.
    6. Ko Wang & Leslie Young & Yuqing Zhou, 2002. "Nondiscriminating Foreclosure and Voluntary Liquidating Costs," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(3), pages 959-985.
    7. John Riley & Richard Zeckhauser, 1983. "Optimal Selling Strategies: When to Haggle, When to Hold Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 267-289.
    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. John Krainer & Mark M. Spiegel & Nobuyoshi Yamori, 2005. "Asset price declines and real estate market illiquidity: evidence from Japanese land values," Working Paper Series 2004-16, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    2. David L. Kelly & Stephen F. LeRoy, 2005. "Liquidity and fire sales," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), pages 249-270.
    3. John Krainer & Mark M. Spiegel & Nobuyoshi Yamori, 2010. "Asset Price Persistence and Real Estate Market Illiquidity: Evidence from Japanese Land Values," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 38(2), pages 171-196, June.

    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. Correia, Ricardo & Población, Javier, 2015. "A structural model with Explicit Distress," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 112-130.
    2. Alessandro Acquisti & Hal R. Varian, 2005. "Conditioning Prices on Purchase History," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 367-381, May.
    3. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Sliwka, Dirk, 1998. "Die Bedeutung von privater Information für Vertragsbeziehungen zwischen Käufern und Verkäufern," MPRA Paper 6941, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Roman Inderst, 2008. "Dynamic Bilateral Bargaining under Private Information with a Sequence of Potential Buyers," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 220-236, January.
    5. Gordon M Phillips & Vojislav Maksimovic, 1996. "Efficiency of Bankrupt Firms and Industry Conditions: Theory and Evidence," Working Papers 96-12, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    6. Alp E. Atakan, 2006. "Competitive Equilibria in Decentralized Matching with Incomplete Information," Discussion Papers 1437, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    7. Gregor Andrade & Steven N. Kaplan, 1997. "How Costly is Financial (not Economic) Distress? Evidence from Highly Leveraged Transactions that Became Distressed," NBER Working Papers 6145, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Norman Saleh & Kamran Ahmed, 2005. "Earnings management of distressed firms during debt renegotiation," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 69-86.
    9. Che, Yeon-Koo & Gale, Ian, 2000. "The Optimal Mechanism for Selling to a Budget-Constrained Buyer," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 198-233, June.
    10. Flávio Menezes & Matthew Ryan, 2009. "Coasian dynamics in repeated English auctions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 38(3), pages 349-366, November.
    11. Qianqian Huang & Ryoonhee Kim, 2019. "Capital structure decisions along the supply chain: Evidence from import competition," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 50(6), pages 873-894, August.
    12. Gabriele Camera & Alain Delacroix, 2004. "Trade Mechanism Selection in Markets with Frictions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(4), pages 851-868, October.
    13. Yi Jin & Charles K.Y. Leung & Zhixiong Zeng, 2012. "Real Estate, the External Finance Premium and Business Investment: A Quantitative Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 40(1), pages 167-195, March.
    14. Tapan Biswas & Jolian Mchardy, 2012. "Asking Price And Price Discounts: The Strategy Of Selling An Asset Under Price Uncertainty," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 4(1), pages 17-37, June.
    15. Koye Somefun, 2001. "Posted Offer versus Bargaining: An Example of how Institutions can Facilitate Learning," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 79, Society for Computational Economics.
    16. Matthews, Steven A. & Postlewaite, Andrew, 1989. "Pre-play communication in two-person sealed-bid double auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 238-263, June.
    17. Clas Bergström & Theodore Eisenberg & Stefan Sundgren & Martin T. Wells, 2005. "The Fate of Firms: Explaining Mergers and Bankruptcies," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(1), pages 49-85, March.
    18. Thorburn, Karin S., 2000. "Bankruptcy auctions: costs, debt recovery, and firm survival," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 337-368, December.
    19. Volker Nocke & Martin Peitz, 2003. "Monopoly Pricing under Demand Uncertainty: Final Sales versus Introductory ffers," PIER Working Paper Archive 03-002, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    20. Sandro Brusco & Eva Ropero, 2007. "Financing Constraints and Firm Dynamics with Durable Capital," Department of Economics Working Papers 07-08, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Illiquidity; Liquidation; Illiquid asset; Bankruptcy costs; Optimal capital structure; Agency costs; Asset pricing; Search; G33; G32; D82; D83; G12;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:spr:joecth:v:31:y:2007:i:3:p:553-572. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.