Information aggregation through stock prices and the cost of capital

This paper studies a firm´s optimal capital structure in an environment, where the firm´s stock price serves as a public signal for its credit worthiness. In equilibrium, equity investors choose how much information to acquire privately, which induces a positive relation between the amount of equity issued and the stock price signal´s precision. Thus, through its capital structure, the firm can internalize the informational externality that stock prices exert on bond yields. Firms with a strong fundamental therefore issue more equity and less debt than they would if the informational spill-over did not exist.