The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
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Debt Maturity, Risk, and Asymmetric Information
Published: 11/10/2005 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00820.x
ALLEN N. BERGER, MARCO A. ESPINOSA‐VEGA, W. SCOTT FRAME, NATHAN H. MILLER
We test the implications of Flannery's (1986) and Diamond's (1991) models concerning the effects of risk and asymmetric information in determining debt maturity, and we examine the overall importance of informational asymmetries in debt maturity choices. We employ data on over 6,000 commercial loans from 53 large U.S. banks. Our results for low‐risk firms are consistent with the predictions of both theoretical models, but our findings for high‐risk firms conflict with the predictions of Diamond's model and with much of the empirical literature. Our findings also suggest a strong quantitative role for asymmetric information in explaining debt maturity.