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Journal of Finance Vol. 62 No. 4 2007

How Costly Is External Financing? Evidence from a Structural Estimation

Christopher A. Hennessy; Toni M. Whited1

1 University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

We apply simulated method of moments to a dynamic model to infer the magnitude of financing costs. The model features endogenous investment, distributions, leverage, and default. The corporation faces taxation, costly bankruptcy, and linear‐quadratic equity flotation costs. For large (small) firms, estimated marginal equity flotation costs start at 5.0% (10.7%) and bankruptcy costs equal to 8.4% (15.1%) of capital. Estimated financing frictions are higher for low‐dividend firms and those identified as constrained by the Cleary and Whited‐Wu indexes. In simulated data, many common proxies for financing constraints actually decrease when we increase financing cost parameters.

DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01255.x
Volume
62
Issue
4
Pages
1705-1745
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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