IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/119123.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corporate walkout decisions and the value of default

Author

Listed:
  • Dahlström, Tom
  • Mella-Barral, Pierre

Abstract

We present a continuous-time asset pricing model of the levered firm where shareholders select not only the timing but also the form of control transfers. Owners are allowed to walk out of the firm either by (i) defaulting on their debt obligations or (ii) selling the firm with its debt obligations, as in a corporation sale. The structural model relates shareholders' ex-post choice to both technological and financial factors. We obtain that the likelihood of default being chosen instead of a corporation sale increases with (i) the degree of leverage displayed by the firm and (ii) its technological supremacy in the industry. Moreover, whereas default necessarily involves inefficient timing of ownership transfers, corporation sales eliminate agency costs and achieve the correct allocation of resources. By ignoring such direct sales of ownership rights, existing defaultable bond pricing models thus often exaggerate risk premia and underestimate the borrowing ability (debt capacity) of firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Dahlström, Tom & Mella-Barral, Pierre, 1999. "Corporate walkout decisions and the value of default," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119123, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:119123
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119123/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    2. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 1998. "Default and Renegotiation: A Dynamic Model of Debt," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 1-41.
    3. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    4. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    5. Mella-Barral, Pierre & Perraudin, William, 1997. "Strategic Debt Service," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 531-556, June.
    6. Higgins, Robert C & Schall, Lawrence D, 1975. "Corporate Bankruptcy and Conglomerate Merger," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 30(1), pages 93-113, March.
    7. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    8. Leland, Hayne E & Toft, Klaus Bjerre, 1996. "Optimal Capital Structure, Endogenous Bankruptcy, and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 987-1019, July.
    9. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    10. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 1994. "A Theory of Debt Based on the Inalienability of Human Capital," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 841-879.
    11. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 1992. "An Incomplete Contracts Approach to Financial Contracting," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(3), pages 473-494.
    12. Harrison, J. Michael & Kreps, David M., 1979. "Martingales and arbitrage in multiperiod securities markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 381-408, June.
    13. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1972. "Some Aspects of the Pure Theory of Corporate Finance: Bankruptcies and Take-Overs," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 3(2), pages 458-482, Autumn.
    14. Hayne E. Leland., 1998. "Agency Costs, Risk Management, and Capital Structure," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-278, University of California at Berkeley.
    15. Anderson, Ronald W & Sundaresan, Suresh, 1996. "Design and Valuation of Debt Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 9(1), pages 37-68.
    16. Mella-Barral, Pierre, 1999. "The Dynamics of Default and Debt Reorganization," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(3), pages 535-578.
    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. Tom Dahlström & Pierre Mella-Barral, 2003. "Corporate Walkout Decisions and the Value of Default," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 7(3), pages 325-360.
    2. Decamps, Jean-Paul & Faure-Grimaud, Antoine, 2002. "Excessive continuation and dynamic agency costs of debt," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1623-1644, October.
    3. Decamps, Jean-Paul & Faure-Grimaud, Antoine, 2000. "Excessive continuation and dynamic agency costs of debt," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119106, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Anderson, Ronald W. & Nyborg, Kjell G., 2011. "Financing and corporate growth under repeated moral hazard," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, January.
    5. Hege, U. & Mella-Barral, P., 1999. "Collateral, Renegotiation and the Value of Diffusely Held Debt," Other publications TiSEM d1806bd7-b34c-4249-b6fd-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Ulrich Hege & Pierre Mella-Barral, 2005. "Repeated Dilution of Diffusely Held Debt," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(3), pages 737-786, May.
    7. João Pinto & Mário Coutinho dos Santos, 2014. "Corporate Financing Choices after the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis," Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) 03, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    8. Jianjun Miao, 2005. "Optimal Capital Structure and Industry Dynamics," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2621-2659, December.
    9. Decamps, Jean-Paul & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Roger, Benoit, 2004. "The three pillars of Basel II: optimizing the mix," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 132-155, April.
    10. Ulrich Hege & Pierre Mella-Barral, 2019. "Bond Exchange Offers or Collective Action Clauses?," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 40(3), pages 77-119.
    11. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    12. Luigi Zingales, 2000. "In Search of New Foundations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1623-1653, August.
    13. Duffie, Darrell, 2003. "Intertemporal asset pricing theory," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 639-742, Elsevier.
    14. Hassan Naqvi, 2004. "The Valuation of Corporate Debt with Default Risk," Finance 0410010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Goto, Makoto & Suzuki, Teruyoshi, 2015. "Optimal default and liquidation with tangible assets and debt renegotiation," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 16-27.
    16. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    17. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2016. "Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström: Contract Theory," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2016-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    18. Oliver Hart, 2001. "Financial Contracting," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1079-1100, December.
    19. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    20. Eduard Marinov, 2016. "The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 97-149.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - 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:ehl:lserod:119123. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.