Dividend Policy, Creditor Rights, and the Agency Costs of Debt

Creditor Rights and Corporate Debt Structure∗

Much of our understanding of creditor rights is based on the notion that better enforcement of contracts reduces borrowing costs, thereby relaxing financial constraints. But what if these rights are too strong? We empirically investigate this question by examining the effect of a securitization reform that strengthened secured creditors rights on corporate debt structure. Strikingly, we find th...

Sovereign Debt Restructuring: the Judge, the Vultures and Creditor Rights

What role did the US courts play in the Argentine debt swap of 2005? What implications does this have for the future of creditor rights in sovereign bond markets? The judge in the Argentine case has, it appears, deftly exploited creditor heterogeneity – between holdouts seeking capital gains and institutional investors wanting a settlement – to promote a swap with a supermajority of creditors. ...

The Influence of Agency Costs on Dividend Policy in an Emerging Market: Evidence from the Tehran Stock Exchange

Dividend policy has long been an issue of interest in the financial literature. To date, a number of studies published on agency costs and dividend policy but most of them are on developed markets, It is well known that the emerging markets are quite different from developed markets in all respects. So, the existing published evidence is of limited relevance in identifying the influence of agen...

Debt Valuation, Renegotiation, and Optimal Dividend Policy

The valuation of debt and equity, reorganization boundaries, and firm’s optimal dividend policies are studied in a framework where we model strategic interactions between debt holders and equity holders in a game-theoretic setting which can accommodate varying bargaining powers to the two claimants. Two formulations of reorganization are presented: debt-equity swaps and strategic debt service r...

Dividend Smoothing, Agency Costs, and Information Asymmetry: Lessons from the Dividend Policies of Private Firms