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Review of Financial Studies Vol. 27 No. 9 2014

Real Estate Prices and Firm Capital Structure

Dragana Cvijanović

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of real estate prices on firm capital structure decisions. For a typical U.S. listed company, a one-standard-deviation increase in predicted value of firm pledgeable collateral translates into a 3 percentage points increase in firm leverage ratio. The identification strategy employs a triple interaction of MSA-level land supply elasticity, real estate prices, and a measure of a firm's real estate holdings as an exogenous source of variation in firm collateral values. Firms significantly change their debt structure in response to collateral value appreciation. The results indicate the importance of collateral values in mitigating potential informational imperfections.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhu035
Volume
27
Issue
9
Pages
2690-2735
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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