Financial Structure and Product Qualities.

We examine the interaction between financial and microeconomic decisions in a differentiated duopoly where additional willingness-to-pay for high quality is uncertain. Product specification is endogenous. We consider two three-stage games, according to the order of moves: qualities-financial structure-prices and financial structure-qualities-prices. Once debt is contracted, the manager maximizes equity instead of total value. We find that in both games debt a) increases both prices and qualities but most likely reduces product differentiation due to rival quality response; b) reduces the value of the levered high quality firm because it increases the low quality. Moreover, c) the cost of debt is higher for the second game, implying that it is higher for projects using debt to finance a product’s development-cumcommercialization compared to those financing only the commercialization stage.Vertical differentiation; uncertainty; financial structure; leverage; sequential quality choice.