Liability maturity opacity and debt structure: Evidence from lease accounting reform

摘要

This paper shows that firms value liability maturity opacity when selecting funding sources in their debt structure. Such opacity may protect proprietary information about project timelines and enable strategic management of disclosures to lenders. Exploiting FASB ASC 842's mandatory lease maturity disclosure requirements as a plausibly exogenous shock, I document how losing maturity opacity affects firms' financing decisions. Isolating the maturity opacity channel from balance sheet recognition effects, I find that following the policy announcement, firms with higher pre-policy maturity opacity significantly reduce their lease usage by 0.9 percentage points (36% of the sample mean). The reduction concentrates in long-term leases, which were previously the most opaque in maturity structure. They also decrease their reliance on bank credit lines, consistent with avoiding heightened scrutiny from better-informed creditors. Consistent with the economic model of leases in Eisfeldt and Rampini (2009), these firms increase secured debt usage by 7.5 percentage points (19.7% of the sample mean) after implementation of the policy. These effects are stronger among firms with low analyst coverage, among financially constrained firms, and in competitive industries, where maturity opacity is more valuable. The findings document firms' preference for liability maturity opacity and reveal a new mechanism through which lease accounting reform shapes debt structure.