European Business Schools Librarian's Group
HEC Research Papers Series,
HEC Paris
No 672: The Investment Policy and the Pricing of Equity in a Levered Firm: a Re-examination of the contingent claims Valuation Approach
Marc CHESNEY and Rajna GIBSON-ASNER
Additional contact information
Rajna GIBSON-ASNER: Ecole des HEC, Universite de Lausanne, Postal: 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Abstract: In this study we re-examine the pricing of equity and the risk incentives of shareholders in levered firms. We derive a down-and-out call equity valuation model which rests on the assumption that shareholders choose the optimal investment and asset returns' volatility as a function of current leverage. Contrarily to the Black and Scholes framework where, irrespective of the firm's leverage, they would always select infinite volatility projects, here the more deep out-of-the-money the shareholders' claim, the greater their incentives to select riskier investment projects. The model is thus consistent which and quantifies the asset substitution problem previously acknowledged by the agency literature.
Keywords: agency problems; asset substitution; contingent claim; down-and-out call option; capital structure; leverage; risk incentives
13 pages, April 1, 1999
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