Debt Overhang Research Articles

CEO inside debt and mutual fund investment decisions

I show equity mutual funds invest less in companies with higher CEO inside debt, whereas corporate bond funds invest more in such companies. The effect persists after accounting for endogeneity using first-time mandatory disclosure of inside debt in 2007 as a quasi-natural experiment, and using state-level personal income tax rates as instruments for inside debt. This finding suggests that fund managers pay attention to incentive implications of inside debt when making portfolio decisions. The effect of inside debt on portfolio allocation is stronger in firms with higher likelihood of default and higher idiosyncratic risk, firms suffering from debt overhang, and firms with lower credit ratings. Lastly, equity funds that underweight high-inside debt firms and bond funds that overweight them deliver positive alphas.

Sovereign ESG and corporate investment: New insights from the United Kingdom

This paper examines the nexus between sovereign environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues and corporate investment decisions from a sustainable perspective. By utilising firm-level balance sheets data, country-level governance and policy uncertainty data, we find country governance has a significant positive effect on firm investment. Moreover, this paper shows that climate and migration policy uncertainty has a statistically and economically significant dampening impact on corporate investment, indicating that environmental and social prospect plays a key role in promoting business investment in the United Kingdom. In addition, the empirical evidence on the moderation analysis of corporate leverage suggests that superior environmental, social, and governance performance can help businesses relieve the burden of debt overhang on firm investment. These results provide several important implications on climate change with the objectives of the COP26 conference.

Debt Overhang and the Retail Apocalypse

Debt overhang is central for theories of capital structure, yet credible em- pirical estimates of its effects remain elusive. We study the consequences and mechanisms of debt overhang using exogenous changes in the leverage of com- mercial retail properties. Identification comes from changes in property values occurring after pre-determined debt rollover dates. We show that debt reduces profitability by impairing property owners? response to negative shocks, re- ducing the business activity of their remaining retail tenants. For the median property, a 10 percentage point leverage increase causes 22% lower employment, mostly in large retail stores, and overall 15% lower operating income.

Effects of Public Debt on Economic Growth in Nigeria

The study was centered on the effect of public debt on economic growth in Nigeria. Given the impact of debt burden on economic growth and other macro-economic parameters, total debt was disaggregated into domestic, external and debt servicing cost. The data was obtained from the Debt Management Office and Federal Office of Statistics. For ease of analysis, the study employed Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) due to the presence of long run relationship identified during data diagnosis. The findings confirmed that domestic debt in the short run is inversely related to growth but positively related in the long run provided it is done with moderation where the total domestic debt did not outweigh 30% of the total domestic bank deposits against crowding out effects. The impact of external debts was both negatively related to economic growth at both short run and long run period due to possible wrong application of loans to project types. It was also important to note that debt servicing posits a major evil plaguing the economy of the country. In summary, the findings confirm that public debts significantly do affect economic growth and against their justification for infrastructural development on fixed capital formation, it was also revealed that it is non-incentive to economic growth, due to wrong resource allocation and timing of such fixed capital investment for appropriate economic growth drive and stimulation. The coefficients of most of these parameters are all statistically significant at 5% confident level. Policy recommendation from the study is that government should only borrow on items that can repay, what the loan was collected for, in the first place. Keywords; Crowding effects, debt financing, debt overhang, Fixed capital formation, economic growth, Nigeria economy

Asymmetric Information and Agency Cost of Financial Leverage and Corporate Investments: Evidence from Emerging South-East European Countries

In this paper, we investigated the impact of financial leverage on investment decisions on a sample of 811 firms from ten emerging South-Eastern European countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Greece, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia and Turkey). We apply a panel regression model involving investment ratio as a dependent variable, leverage as independent variable, and control for several firm characteristics that closely determines the corporate investments. The results of the analysis show that leverage is negatively related to investment in the companies in SEE. But only long term debt has a stronger negative impact on investment for firms with low growth opportunities than for firms with high growth opportunities. These findings show supportive evidence of agency theories of corporate leverage, especially with the debt overhang theory, but did not give strong validation that leverage has a disciplining role for firms with low growth opportunities in SEE emerging markets. In addition to leverage, we found that corporate investments in the SEE countries decrease significantly with tangibility and the company size. Corporate investments in the SEE countries increase significantly with cash flow, sales, non-debt tax shield and profitability. Overall, the results slightly defer with those from the research on the case of developed markets.

Debt Sustainability in Developing Economies: Evidence from Sub-Sahara Africa

In this study, we assess the debt sustainability of emerging economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. We specify a dynamic panel threshold to estimate the debt threshold for primary surplus and economic growth. The results reveal a non-linear threshold effect. First, with a threshold value of 17.95%, the primary surplus has a strong positive relationship with the debt-to-GDP ratio. Second, economic growth is maintained when the debt-to-GDP ratio is about 52%. The study recommends that governments in SSA should make conscious efforts to restore fiscal discipline that will keep the debt burden at a rate reasonable enough to sustain and avoid debt overhang problems.

Does Debt Have Threshold Effects on Medium-Term Growth? Evidence from European Union Countries

Abstract Debt has become an important factor in economic activity and its extent has incentivized many researchers to incorporate it into contemporary growth models. On the positive side, debt has the ability to smoothen private consumption, firms’ investment and government expenditure in relation to their corresponding income, subsequently leading to better capital allocation. However, the history of debt defaults and lessons from European sovereign debt crises, which were accompanied by strict austerity measures, have warned us about the danger of debt overhang and unsustainable debt burdens. This paper tackles the question of the existence of a turning point, at which the negative effects of debt start to prevail in the economic process. In the sample of European Union countries in the period from 1995 to 2019, the author of this paper investigated the presence of threshold effects of government, non-financial corporate and household debt on medium-term growth following the paper by Mika and Žumer (2017). The author first confirmed the concave-shaped relationship between public debt and growth with a threshold of 111.6% of GDP, based on Eurostat debt-to-GDP data. In contrast, private debt was found to have first lag effects with an accompanied convex-shaped relationship between private debt and growth and with a corresponding threshold of 149.8% of GDP. Next, the author divided private debt into non-financial corporate and household debt to investigate a more detailed relationship between debt and growth. Corresponding to the Global Debt Database, the concave-shaped relationship between public debt and growth was confirmed with a threshold of 104.8% of GDP. Both of the investigated types of private debt confirmed the previously explored lagged impact on medium-term growth and a convex-shaped relationship between non-financial corporate and household debt and growth. The threshold of non-financial corporate debt stands at 138.3% of GDP, while that for household debt is 145.1% of GDP. Considering the presence of thresholds may offer an important message to economic policymakers, as timely and suitable governance can lead to either higher economic growth or prevent adverse effects of excessive indebtedness.

Debt structure and debt overhang

We study the impact of heterogeneous debt structures on corporate financing and investment decisions in a dynamic trade-off model. The issuance of bank debt along with market debt accelerates investment and mitigates the ex-post debt overhang relative to exclusive market debt structures. A growth firm optimally increases its reliance on bank debt and decreases its usage of market debt when it has fewer valuable growth opportunities, its asset volatility is higher, its bankruptcy cost is lower, or it faces a low tax rate environment. We identify the non-monotonic effects of the cyclicality of growth opportunities on firms’ optimal debt composition.

External Debt Accumulation and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows in Sub-Saharan Africa: Analysing the Interaction Effects of Selected Macroeconomic Factors

By pooling a sample of 25 countries spanning from 1990–2017, this study analyzed the relationship between external debt accumulation and foreign direct investment inflows in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study employed Panel fixed effects and the Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique in order to address the potential issue of endogeneity. The results of the fixed effects and GMM analysis revealed a significant negative relationship between external debt accumulation and FDI inflows in SSA region. However, when external debt was interacted with macroeconomic variables such as corporate tax, infrastructure development, economic growth and military expenditure, the result shows a positive interaction effect between external debt and infrastructure development on FDI suggesting that external debt can positively influence FDI if channeled into the provision of critical infrastructures. On the other hand, the interaction effect of corporate tax showed a negative relationship between external debt and FDI and provided strong support for the debt overhang theory by Krugman which holds true in SSA region. Finally, economic growth and military expenditure also showed a negative interaction effect.

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

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 non-financial 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 3.7 million non-financial firms from 58 countries during the period 1997–2019, 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 non-financial firms, especially if the COVID-19 pandemic lingers and global downturn becomes protracted.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXTERNAL PUBLIC DEBT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: AS A CASE OF UZBEKISTAN

This study investigates the relationship between external debt and economic growth in the Uzbekistan during the period 2010–2020. Two-step Engle and Granger Cointegration method is employed to determine the cointegration relationship between external debt and GDP growth. Our findings show that there is a negative significant relationship between external debt and economic growth. We can also observe that a 1% increase in external debt will lead to a 24% decrease in GDP growth. Also the results of ECM model suggests that if economic shocks and periodic downturn occur in GDP as a result of external debt, then 86.0% will return to its equilibrium in each subsequent short period. This suggests that GDP growth may return to its equilibrium after a period of 1.17 (1/86) from debt crisis and shocks. KEYWORDS: economic growth, cointegration, debt overhang, external public debt, error correction model.

Debt Overhang, Rollover Risk, and Corporate Investment: Evidence from the European Crisis

Abstract We quantify the role of financial leverage behind the sluggish post-crisis investment performance of European firms. We use a cross-country firm-bank matched database to identify separate roles for firm leverage, bank balance sheet weaknesses arising from sovereign risk, and aggregate demand conditions. We find that firms entering the crisis with higher debt levels reduce their investment more after the crisis. This negative effect is stronger for firms holding short-term debt in countries whose banks are weak due to sovereign stress, consistent with rollover risk being an important channel influencing investment. The negative effect of firm leverage on investment is also persistent for several years after the shock in the countries with sovereign stress. The corporate leverage channel can explain about 20% of the cumulative decline in aggregate private sector investment over the crisis period.

Zombies at Large? Corporate Debt Overhang and the Macroeconomy

Abstract Debt overhang is associated with higher financial fragility and slower recovery from recession. However, while household credit booms have been extensively documented to have this property, we find that corporate debt does not fit the same pattern. Newly collected data on nonfinancial business liabilities for 18 advanced economies over the past 150 years shows that, in the aggregate, greater frictions in corporate debt resolution make for slower recoveries, with weak investment and more persistent “zombie firms” and that this is an important factor in explaining the difference in outcomes relative to household credit booms.

Post COVID-19 exit strategies and emerging markets economic challenges.

We study emerging markets' 1980s lost growth decade, triggered by the massive reversal of the snowball effect in the US during 1974–1984, finding that higher flow costs of servicing debt overhang explain the dramatic decline in growth rates of exposed emerging markets. We also show how lowering the US cost of servicing its public debt has been associated with higher US, Japan, and Western Europe real output growth rates during the post WWII recovery decades, 1946–1956, and validate that fiscal adjustments of large countries have strong growth and volatility spillovers effects on exposed emerging markets and developing countries.

From the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Risk of Expansionary Monetary Policies

Central banks have been pursuing an expansionary monetary policy since before the pandemic, although the health and economic crisis of COVID-19 has boosted asset purchase programmes. After the Great Recession, a new phase began, characterised by low interest rates and liquidity injections. These policies spilled over into financial markets and are leading to higher inflation. These policies stabilised the situation in the short term, but if they continue indefinitely there is a risk of debt overhang, investment mistakes and high inflation in the future. The aim of this article is to analyse monetary policy developments from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 crisis. Correlations between different macroeconomic variables will be shown through IBM SPSS Statistics. For this purpose, bi-variate correlations were used. For the predictions and confidence of the model data, Tableau Desktop Edition was used, which in turn was used for the generation of the graphs. There is a strong correlation between the growth of monetary aggregates and public debt and stock market capitalisation for the selected indicators. The main contribution of this research is the analysis of the long-term effects of a monetary policy.

Family Finances and Debt Overhang: Evolving Consumption Patterns of Spanish Households

Family Finances and Debt Overhang: Evolving Consumption Patterns of Spanish Households

Private Equity Funds and Strategic Buyers -- Effort, Debt Overhang, and Cross-Subsidization

Private Equity Funds and Strategic Buyers -- Effort, Debt Overhang, and Cross-Subsidization

Sticky Leverage and Debt Overhang: Evidence from Foreign-Denominated Debt in Latin America

Sticky Leverage and Debt Overhang: Evidence from Foreign-Denominated Debt in Latin America

Debt and Capital Overhangs

Debt and Capital Overhangs

Household Debt Overhang and Human Capital Investment

Household Debt Overhang and Human Capital Investment