Capital Structure and Debt Structure

Using a novel data set that records individual debt issues on the balance sheet of a large random sample of rated public firms, we show that a recognition of debt heterogeneity leads to new insights into the determinants of corporate capital structure. We first demonstrate that traditional capital structure studies that ignore debt heterogeneity miss a substantial fraction of capital structure variation. We then show that relative to high credit quality firms, low credit quality firms are more likely to have a multi-tiered capital structure consisting of both secured bank debt with tight covenants and subordinated non-bank debt with loose covenants. Further, while high credit quality firms enjoy access to a…