Finance Seminar（2013-20）

Topic: Dynamic Information Asymmetry, Financing, and Investment Decisions

Speaker: ZHU Haoxiang, MIT Sloan School of Management

Time: Monday, 4 November, 10:00-11:30

Location: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract: We reexamine the classic yet static information-asymmetry model of Myers and Majluf (1984) in a fully dynamic market. A firm has access to an investment project and can finance it by debt or equity. The market learns the quality of the firm over time by observing cash flows generated by assets in place. In the dynamic equilibrium, the firm optimally delays investment, but investment eventually takes place. In a “two-threshold” equilibrium, a high-quality firm invests only if the market's belief goes above an optimal upper threshold, and a low-quality firm invests if the market's belief goes above the upper threshold or below a lower threshold. Under certain conditions, such as high volatilities of cash flows, a different “four-threshold” equilibrium emerges. Moreover, holding fixed the project NPV and all else, a project with a lower probability of success is financed by equity, whereas a project with a higher probability of success is financed by debt.