New empirical evidence on the debt maturity choice and the role of credit risk
Using cross-sectional time series data on 710 US firms over the period from 1995 to 1998 this paper firstly employs a new approach to estimate the maturity of a firms total debt based on debt level and flow data. We secondly provide new insights into the role of credit risk in the debt maturity choice. Consistent with theory our results confirm the nonmonotonic relation between credit rating and debt maturity. However,in contrast to previous studies we observe a considerable deviation in the debt maturity structure for unrated firms and for firms with medium credit ratings. Introducing alternative measures for credit risk our results show that the predicted screen-out of firms with low credit quality from the long-term maturity market is less pronounced based on these alternative measures.
debt maturity structure credit risk
Andreas Hackethal Christian Jansen
European Business School,International University,SchloB Reichartshausen,65375 Oestrich-Winkel,Germany
国际会议
成都
英文
2007-07-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）