[This article proposes a theory of investment fluctuations in which the source of the oscillating dynamics is an agency problem between financiers and entrepreneurs. In the model, investment decisions depend on entrepreneurs' initiative to select investment projects ex ante, and financiers' incentive to control entrepreneurs ex post. Too much control discourages entrepreneurial incentive to initiate new investment, whereas too little control jeopardizes its productivity. This initiative-control trade-off is capable of generating endogenous reversal of investment booms, induced by an ongoing deterioration of project profitability. Investment fluctuations may arise even though no external shocks hit the economy and agents are perfectly rational.]

This article proposes a theory of investment fluctuations in which the source of the oscillating dynamics is an agency problem between financiers and entrepreneurs. In the model, investment decisions depend on entrepreneurs' initiative to select investment projects ex ante, and financiers' incentive to control entrepreneurs ex post. Too much control discourages entrepreneurial incentive to initiate new investment, whereas too little control jeopardizes its productivity. This initiative-control trade-off is capable of generating endogenous reversal of investment booms, induced by an ongoing deterioration of project profitability. Investment fluctuations may arise even though no external shocks hit the economy and agents are perfectly rational. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

During the U.S. housing credit boom, publicly traded banks increased mortgage lending activity and relaxed standards much more than privately held banks. The increase in risk had real effects for a variety of county-level aggregates including employment and consumption. Cross-sectional evidence and a quasi-experiment indicate that the increase in risk stemmed from the institutional ownership and the equity compensation of publicly traded banks, in turn leading banks to place greater weight on short-term equity performance. These results are consistent with the view that a focus on short-term earnings and stock prices amplifies boom–bust credit cycles, in turn leading to real cycles for the aggregate economy.

An exogenous expansion in mortgage credit has significant effects on house prices. This finding is established using US branching deregulations between 1994 and 2005 as instruments for credit. Credit increases for deregulated banks, but not in placebo samples. Such differential responses rule out demand-based explanations, and identify an exogenous credit supply shock. Because of geographic diver-sification, treated banks expand credit: housing demand increases, house prices rise, but to a lesser extent in areas with elastic housing supply, where the housing stock increases instead. In an instrumental variable sense, house prices are well explained by the credit expansion induced by deregulation.

We provide evidence that lenders differ in their ex post incentives to internalize price‐default externalities associated with the liquidation of collateralized debt. Using the mortgage market as a laboratory, we conjecture that lenders with a large share of outstanding mortgages on their balance sheets internalize the negative spillovers associated with the liquidation of defaulting mortgages and thus are less inclined to foreclose. We provide evidence consistent with our conjecture. Arguably as a consequence, zip codes with a higher concentration of outstanding mortgages experience smaller house prices declines. These results are not driven by unobservable zip code or lender characteristics.

Better access to debt markets mitigates the effects of uncertainty on corporate policies. We establish this result using the staggered introduction of anti-recharacterization laws in US states. These laws enhanced firms’ ability to borrow by strengthening creditors’ rights to repossess collateral pledged in special purpose vehicles. After the passage of the laws, firms that face more uncertainty hoard less cash and increase payouts, leverage, and investment in intangible assets. Our findings suggest that better access to debt markets shields firms from fluctuations in uncertainty and decreases firms’ precautionary behavior, contributing to the deployment of cash and other internal resources to investment in intangible capital.

Capital surcharges on global systemically important banks (GSIBs) decrease lending to firms but do not have any real effects. Banks subject to higher surcharges reduce loan commitments relative to other banks and also lower their estimates of firm risk. Firms’ total borrowing, however, does not fall, as firms switch to other banks. We establish these results using supervisory data on corporate loans and variation in surcharges in the United States. These results contribute to the debate on the costs and benefits of surcharges and regulatory tailoring and their effects on the reallocation of credit supply across financial institutions.

We show that the prospect of a debt renegotiation favorable to shareholders reduces the firm's equity risk. Equity beta and return volatility are lower in countries where the bankruptcy code favors debt renegotiations and for firms with more shareholder bargaining power relative to debt holders. These relations weaken as the country's insolvency procedure favors liquidations over renegotiations. In the limit, when debt contracts cannot be renegotiated, equity risk is independent of shareholders' incentives to default strategically. We argue that these findings support the hypothesis that the threat of strategic default can reduce the firm's equity risk.

We argue that the prospect of an imperfect enforcement of debt contracts in default reduces shareholder–debtholder conflicts and induces leveraged firms to invest more and take on less risk as they approach financial distress. To test these predictions, we use a large panel of firms in 41 countries with heterogeneous debt enforcement characteristics. Consistent with our model, we find that the relation between debt enforcement and firms’ investment and risk depends on the firm-specific probability of default. A differences-in-differences analysis of firms’ investment and risk taking in response to bankruptcy reforms that make debt more renegotiable confirms the cross-country evidence.