Kicking Maturity Down the Road: Early Refinancing and Maturity Management in the Corporate Bond Market
研究发现投机级公司常通过提前再融资延长债务期限，尤其在信贷宽松时，导致期限结构顺周期；投资级公司则无此行为。证据表明这是为降低再融资风险的主动管理。
This paper examines debt maturity management through early refinancing, where firms retire their outstanding bonds before the due date and simultaneously issue new ones as replacements. Speculative-grade firms frequently refinance their corporate bonds early to extend maturity, particularly under accommodating credit supply conditions, leading to a procyclical maturity structure. In contrast, investment-grade firms do not manage their maturity in the same manner. I exploit the protection period of callable bonds to show that the maturity extension is not driven by unobservable confounding factors. The evidence is consistent with speculative-grade firms dynamically managing maturity to mitigate refinancing risk. Received June 6, 2016; editorial decision September 21, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan.