Corporate Finance, Governance and Business Cycles

Corporate Finance, Governance, and Business Cycles describes a model of how a financial system coordinates and shapes certain stylised facts of business cycles. The model is based on a conflict of interest between more risk averse bondholders, and less risk averse stockholders whose risk aversion changes over time. The corporate governance resolution of this conflict assigns the operating decisions of the firm to stockholders and the financing decisions to bondholders. Financing decisions are then linked to operating decisions in a way that coalesces the welfare of bondholders and stockholders over the business cycle. Evidence from the nonfinancial business sector of the G-7 countries does not reject the predictions of the model.