This paper studies whether and to what extent transparent disclosure prevents inefficient liquidation arising from rollover risk. We model an illiquid but solvent borrower who can design a public signal about what creditors can recover from forcing liquidation, and what their claims would be worth if the firm survives. We find that the signal structure that minimizes rollover risk never identif...

In contrast to insurance companies, regulatory authorities or regulators can obtain only limited information about the companies’ value. It hence leads to some effects on the regulation design, which is however often overlooked in the literature. This paper characterizes the limited/imperfect information as Knightian [1921] uncertainty (ambiguity). In order to stress the analytical effects of a...

Turmoil in financial markets is often accompanied by a significant decrease in market liquidity. Here, we investigate how such key risk measures as likelihood of insolvency, value at risk, and expected tail loss respond to bid– ask spreads that are likely to widen just when positions must be liquidated to maintain capital ratios. Our results show that this sort of illiquidity causes significant...

In a long-term contract with moral hazard, the liquidation of the firm can arise as the outcome of the optimal contract. However, if the future production capability or market opportunities remain unchanged, liquidation may not be free from renegotiation. Will the firm ever be liquidated if we allow for renegotiation? This paper shows that the firm can still be liquidated even though liquidatio...

We consider a dynamic model in which shareholders delegate a manager, who observes private information about running and liquidation costs of the firm, to operate the firm. We analytically derive the shareholders’ optimal contract contingent on the cost structure of the firm. The information asymmetries change the high-cost firm’s default and liquidation timing. Even if the liquidation value is...

I study the implications of various bankruptcy regimes for student loans on college investment, human capital accumulation, and earnings in a heterogeneous life-cycle economy with risky human capital investment. The option to discharge one’s debt under a liquidation regime helps alleviate some of the risk of investing in human capital. However, dischargeability triggers exclusion from borrowing...

We propose a tractable model of entrepreneur dynamics where the investment conditions are stochastic. Applying the approach of stochastic control and optimization, we solve the dynamics of the entrepreneur’s optimal investment, consumption and portfolio allocation under regime switching. We find that the interactions of precautionary savings and liquidation boundary advance/postpone motives gen...

We develop a model in which cash-constrained entrepreneurs seek a venture capitalist (VC) to finance a new firm. Costly monitoring is employed by VCs to reduce entrepreneurial moral hazard. When monitoring reveals poor performance, VCs want to punish the entrepreneur with liquidation. However, when assets are specific and liquidation would lead to a loss, VCs choose to renegotiate the terms of ...

We study optimal dynamic financial contracts between a lender and a borrower in the presence of costly state verification. The efficient contract is such that (1) interim monitoring can prevent future inefficient liquidation of investment projects that are due to informational asymmetries and (2) two levels of bankruptcy can be distinguished, one that leads to monitoring and the other that lead...

1Division of Accounting, School of Business, NanyangBusiness School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2Leventhal School of Accounting,Marshall School of Business, University of SouthernCalifornia, USA Correspondence Clive Lennox, Leventhal School ofAccounting, Marshall School ofBusiness,University of SouthernCalifornia, 3670TrousdaleParkway, Los Angeles,CA90089,USA. Email: clennox@us...