IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2020-287.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Leverage Shocks: Firm-Level Evidence on Debt Overhang and Investment

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Serhan Cevik
  • Fedor Miryugin

Abstract

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This systemic risk like no other at a time of record-breaking debt levels, especially among nonfinancial firms across the world, could exacerbate corporate vulnerabilities, deepen macro-financial instability, and cause long-lasting damage to economic potential. Using data on more than 2.8 million nonfinancial firms from 52 countries during the period 1997–2018, we develop a two-pronged approach to investigate the relationship between corporate leverage and fixed investment spending. The empirical analysis, robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, confirm corporate leverage is highly vulnerable to disruptions in profitability and cash flow at the firm level and economic growth at the aggregate level. These findings imply that corporate debt overhang could become a strenuous burden on nonfinancial firms, especially if the COVID-19 pandemic lingers and global downturn becomes protracted.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Serhan Cevik & Fedor Miryugin, 2020. "Leverage Shocks: Firm-Level Evidence on Debt Overhang and Investment," IMF Working Papers 2020/287, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2020/287
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=49965
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Federico Huneeus & Joseph Kaboski & Mauricio Larrain & Sergio Schmukler & Mario Vera, 2022. "The Distribution of Crisis Credit: Effects on Firm Indebtedness and Aggregate Risk," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 942, Central Bank of Chile.
    2. Hubert Bruslerie & Luminita Enache, 2023. "The dynamics of leverage of newly controlled target firms: evidence after an acquisition," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 411-445, August.
    3. Serhan Cevik & Alice Fan & Sadhna Naik, 2024. "Is inflation good for business? the firm-level impact of inflation shocks in the Baltics, 1997–2020," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 1-19, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate debt; leverage; debt overhang; fixed investment; firm-level; WP; nonfinancial firm; firm level; sector peer; investment appetite; empirical inquiry; firm size; firms' behavior; indebted firm;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:imf:imfwpa:2020/287. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.