@article{5f8e375349f5455a914116824285c6c8,
title = "Collateral, Taxes, and Leverage",
abstract = "We quantify the importance of collateral versus taxes for firms' capital structures. We estimate a dynamic model in which a taxable firm seeks financing for investment, and a dynamic contracting environment motivates endogenous collateral constraints. Optimal leverage stays a safe distance from the constraint, balancing the tax benefit of debt with the cost of lost financial flexibility. We estimate this flexibility cost to be 7.2% of firm assets, a percentage that is comparable to the tax benefit. Models with different tax rates fit the data equally well, and leverage responds to the tax rate only when taxes are low.",
author = "Shaojin Li and Whited, {Toni M.} and Yufeng Wu",
note = "Funding Information: This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1053575. Shaojin Li acknowledges support from NSFC Project 71303146. Xu Tian provided excellent research assistance. We thank two anonymous referees, Itay Goldstein (editor), Harry DeAngelo, Shane Heitzman, Erwan Morellec, Adriano Rampini, Neng Wang, and seminar participants at Cass Business School, CEMFI, Duke, EPFL, Indiana, Michigan, Northeastern, Princeton, urdue, Warwick, Wirtschaftsuniversit?t Wien, and York University for helpful comments and suggestions. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016 The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved.",
year = "2016",
month = jun,
day = "18",
doi = "10.1093/rfs/hhw008",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "29",
pages = "1453--1500",
journal = "Review of Financial Studies",
issn = "0893-9454",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "6",
}