Guarantees, Leverage, and Taxes
研究了在税收与破产权衡下，企业组织与资本结构的最优联合决策，强调条件担保（如母子公司结构）对增加联合价值和债务的作用，并与合并中的无条件相互担保进行比较。
This paper considers the optimal joint decision on firm organization and capital structure under a tax-bankruptcy trade-off, stressing the role of guarantees against default. Conditional guarantees, which are embedded in parent-subsidiary structures, increase joint value and joint debt relative to unguaranteed stand-alone firms. Such guarantees, that are unilateral rather than mutual for moderate default costs, may dominate the unconditional mutual guarantees built in mergers. We study the optimal characteristics of both guarantors and beneficiaries, as well as their impact on the self-enforcement potential of conditional guarantees.