NBER Publications by Viral V. Acharya

We model the interplay between cash and debt policies in the presence of financial constraints. While saving cash allows financially constrained firms to hedge against future income shortfalls, reducing debt - "saving borrowing capacity" - is a more effective way of securing future investment in high cash flow states. This trade-off implies that constrained firms will allocate excess cash flows into cash holdings if their hedging needs are high (i.e., if the correlation between operating cash flows and investment opportunities is low). However, constrained firms will use excess cash flows to reduce current debt if their hedging needs are low. The empirical examination of cash and debt policies of a large sample of constrained and unconstrained firms reveals evidence that is consistent with...

This paper solves explicitly an equilibrium asset pricing model with liquidity risk -- the risk arising from unpredictable changes in liquidity over time. In our liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model, a security's required return depends on its expected liquidity as well as on the covariances of its own return and liquidity with market return and market liquidity. In addition, the model shows how a negative shock to a security's liquidity, if it is persistent, results in low contemporaneous returns and high predicted future returns. The model provides a simple, unified framework for understanding the various channels through which liquidity risk may affect asset prices. Our empirical results shed light on the total and relative economic significance of these channels.