上市公司债务融资、公司治理与市场价值

本文就上市公司的债务融资与公司治理、公司市场价值的关系进行了理论分析和实证检验 ,发现我国上市公司债务融资占总资产的比重不大 ;总体上债务融资具有加强公司治理、增加公司市场价值的作用 ,但是对于少数资产负债率非常高的公司 ,这种作用并不显著 ;市场对公司发行债券有积极的反应 ;同时债务融资起到了传递公司业绩的信号作用。     

负债融资、负债来源与企业投资行为——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

本文以我国上市公司为研究对象,考察负债融资及负债来源对企业投资行为的影响,从而揭示我国上市公司中股东-债权人冲突和负债作为治理机制所带来的经济后果。实证结果表明,负债比例越高的企业,企业投资规模越小,且两者之间的相关程度受新增投资项目风险与投资新项目前企业风险大小关系的影响———低项目风险企业比高项目风险企业,投资额随负债比例上升而下降得更快。此外,本项研究还发现,不同来源负债对企业投资规模的影响程度不尽相同。     

Why is the corporate tax rate lower than the personal tax rate?: The role of new firms

In many OECD countries, statutory corporate tax rates are lower than personal income tax rates. This tax rate difference is often particularly large for small firms. The present paper argues that a reduction of the corporate tax rate below the personal tax rate is an optimal tax policy if there are problems of asymmetric information between investors and firms in the capital market. The reduction of the corporate tax rate below the personal tax rate encourages equity financing and thus mitigates the excessive use of debt financing induced by asymmetric information. Our main theoretical result stands in marked contrast to the traditional view of corporate taxation and corporate finance theory, according to which there is a tax disadvantage to equity financing. More recent empirical evidence on this issue, however, is in line with our result.     

Shift from gross profit taxation to distributed profit taxation: Are there effects on firms?

This paper investigates the consequences of the corporate tax reform in Estonia in 2000. This unique reform nullified the taxation of retained earnings and maintained corporate income tax only on distributed profits. We investigate the outcome of the reform by comparing the performance of the affected firms in Estonia with that of firms from Latvia and Lithuania, the two other Baltic countries. We use firm-level financial data and the difference in differences approach for our analysis. The results are consistent with an increase in holdings of liquid assets and lower use of debt financing after the reform. A positive relationship of the reform with post-reform investment and productivity has also been found. The results point to a stronger effect on smaller firms.     

Strategic Policy Towards Multinationals for Oligopolistic Industries

The author considers an environment with two firms, one domestically owned and one a foreign-owned multinational corporation (MNC), both producing in the host (domestic) country. It is found that there are three distinct dimensions that affect a country's strategic policy towards domestically-owned firms and foreign-owned firms: the number of policy instruments available to the host government (whether or not it can tax/subsidize both types of firms), the location of the market (in the host country or a third country), and the extent of spillover of the foreign-owned firms' production.     

Access to finance,foreign ownership and foreign takeovers in Germany

With this article we present the first microeconometric analysis of the impact of a foreign acquisition on the target firm’s access to finance. By using a large database of German firms, we furthermore investigate for the first time the link between foreign ownership and access to finance in Germany, one of the world's leading target countries for FDI. We use newly available comprehensive panel data that we constructed from information collected by the German statistical offices and from credit rating scores supplied by the leading German credit rating agency. We find foreign-owned firms in German manufacturing on average to show slightly more financing restrictions than domestically owned enterprises, but this very small difference diminishes once unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account. We further demonstrate that one reason for this finding is the preference of foreign investors for targets with relatively low credit-worthiness. Although the likelihood of a foreign acquisition appears to be correlated with credit rating, there is no impact of foreign takeovers on the credit constraints of the target firms ex post and therefore no support for the hypothesis that foreign takeovers ease financial frictions.     

Imperfect competition in financial markets and capital structure

We consider a model of corporate finance with imperfectly competitive financial intermediaries. Firms can finance projects either via debt or via equity. Because of asymmetric information about firms’ growth opportunities, equity financing involves a dilution cost. Nevertheless, equity emerges in equilibrium whenever financial intermediaries have sufficient market power. In the latter case, best firms issue debt while the less profitable firms are equity-financed. We also show that strategic interaction between oligopolistic intermediaries results in multiple equilibria. If one intermediary chooses to buy more debt, the price of debt decreases, so the best equity-issuing firms switch from equity to debt financing. This in turn decreases average quality of equity-financed pool, so other intermediaries also shift towards more debt.     

Corruption and corporate leverage in an emerging economy: The role of economic freedom

This study investigated the effects of corruption and economic freedom on corporate leverage. We also evaluated how economic freedom shapes the effect of corruption on corporate leverage. Using a sample of Vietnamese firms covering a nine-year period from 2010 to 2018, we find evidence that increased control of corruption has a significant positive impact on firm leverage, whereas the opposite is true for economic freedom. This effect is robust to alternative measures of control of corruption as well as advanced estimation methods, such as firm-fixed effects and quantile regressions. Our results also reveal that the positive impact of corruption controls on corporate leverage is more pronounced for firms with high economic freedom. Econometrically, our findings indicate that firms with better control over corruption prefer debt financing, as demonstrated by their higher leverage ratio.     

制度环境、所有权性质与负债的治理效应

已有证据发现制度环境对企业债务融资具有重要的影响,但就制度环境对不同所有制之间负债治理效应差异的影响尚不明了。本文以我国上市公司2003—2007年的数据为样本,初步检验了国有上市公司和民营上市公司在负债治理效应方面是否存在显著差异以及制度环境对两者关系的影响。结果发现,整体上国有上市公司在负债治理效应上显著弱于民营上市公司,但是随着政府干预的减少、市场化进程的加快和法制水平的提高,国有上市公司相比民营上市公司在负债治理效应方面的差异将会逐渐缩小。这一研究成果不仅丰富了国内外学者对负债治理效应的相关经验研究,而且有助于我们更加深入地理解导致负债治理效应差异的制度根源。     

地方政府性债务治理与上市企业投融资*——基于我国247座城市的初步证据

本文利用中国社科院披露的我国247座城市地方政府性债务对金融稳定影响的评价指数,分析了地方政府性债务治理对上市企业债务融资与资本性投资效率的影响及其传导机理。研究发现,与地方政府性债务治理较好地区相比,处于地方政府性债务治理较差地区的地方政府控股国企,其杠杆率均显著较高,但企业资本性投资效率却显著较低,企业产能过剩的财务特征十分明显。这表明,地方政府性债务治理会显著影响微观企业的投融资,并且地方政府性债务治理越差,透过政府对经济活动的控制或干预,通过预算外举债,政府“杠杆”有转化为企业“杠杆”的风险。本文明确了“去杠杆”究竟应去谁的“杠杆”问题,对理解地方政府性债务治理转变为“内涵型”经济增长的微观基础具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

Taxation and Capital Structure Choice: The Role of Ownership

Applying firm fixed‐effects estimations to European firm‐level data, I analyze how ownership structure affects the relationship between taxation and capital structure. I find that an increase in the corporate tax rate affects the debt‐to‐assets ratio positively, and that this effect is stronger for firms with concentrated ownership. These results hold independently of whether firms are standalone or subsidiaries, and are also valid if subsidiaries are divided into those that are foreign‐owned and those domestically owned. Lastly, ownership plays a role even when controlling for other potentially important determinants of the relation between corporate taxation and capital structure.     

The impact of the corporate income tax: evidence from state organizational form data

By taxing the income of corporate firms at a different rate than non-corporate firms, taxes can play an important role in a firm's choice of organizational form. The sensitivity of the organizational form decision to tax rates provides a key indicator of the distortion created by the corporate income tax. This paper uses new cross-sectional data on organizational form choices across states compiled in the Census of Retail Trade to estimate this sensitivity. The results document a significant impact of the relative taxation of corporate to personal income on the share of real economic activity that is done by corporations and that the impact is many times larger than has been found in the previous empirical literature based on time-series data. The results show little impact, however, on the actual operations of firms such as their labor intensity, wages and the like. They do indicate that firms are able to exploit the progressivity of the corporate income tax system by dividing into numerous firms.     

Financial globalization and debt maturity in emerging economies

This paper studies how financial globalization affects debt structure in emerging economies. We find that by accessing international markets, firms increase their long-term debt and extend their debt maturity. In contrast, with financial liberalization, long-term debt decreases and the maturity structure shifts to the short term for the average firm. These effects are stronger in economies with less developed domestic financial systems. The evidence is consistent with financial integration having opposite effects on the firms that are able to integrate with world markets and obtain financing globally, relative to the firms that rely on domestic financing only.     

Financial Frictions and Risky Corporate Debt

We offer clarifications on Cooley and Quadrini (2001) regarding financial frictions and risky corporate debt pricing. Even in a frictionless world, the promised rate on corporate debt is not identical across firms and across capital structures and it is not equal to the risk-free rate. Frictions are unnecessary for credit spreads to arise. Only if the macroeconomy is in actuality risk free or risk neutral do interest rates on corporate debt reflect default probabilities. To the extent that the firm's entire financial structure is traded, a bias in credit spreads introduces an exploitable arbitrage opportunity. Re-establishing no-arbitrage, firm dynamics move in the opposite direction to Cooley and Quadrini's.     

Distress cost and corporate financing policy: evidence from the equity options market

This study examines the link between distress cost and corporate financing policy through the lens of the equity options market. Four features stand out. First, the cost of distress is comparable to the tax shield from debt financing. Second, the results provide evidence that ordinary least-squares estimates understate the impact of market leverage on default risk. Third, consistent with the information models of debt maturity, firms with higher default probability use more long-term debt. Finally, more distressed firms rely on secured debt to a greater extent. Overall, the results support the trade-off theory of capital structure.     

What determines outstanding corporate debt mix? Evidence from fractional multinomial logit estimation

This study employs the fractional multinomial logit setting proposed by Papke and Wooldridge (1996) to examine factors driving the choice among nonbank private (144A) debt, bank loans and public debt made by 988 nonfinancial firms during 1993–2007. We document that the majority of firm-level factors have persistent effects on corporate outstanding debt mix across economic conditions. We also highlight the importance of macroeconomic variables on firms’ borrowing decisions as predicted by Diamond (1991). Finally, we document a substitution effect among debt financing sources due to credit rating downgrades, which is inconsistent with Rauh and Sufi (2010).     

产能治理与企业债务结构再平衡—基于商业信用与银行信贷关系视角

我国上市制造业企业的商业信用与银行信贷关系存在长期互补特征,但信号理论对互补强度的演变过程缺乏有效的解释力.为探索信号理论之外的互补机制,反思企业债务结构的信贷偏移效应,文章提出了产能驱动假说,利用面板门限模型,得到了以下结论:(1)商业信用与银行信贷会随产能增长而呈现从"替代"到"互补"的演变特征,且互补强度(单位商业信用上升伴随的信贷上升)会随产能膨胀出现从"弱"到"强"的二次突变特征,即产能扭曲会使企业债务结构快速向银行信贷偏移,这为理解企业信贷依赖的形成路径提供了产能层面的微观解释.(2)企业债务结构再平衡能力具有异质性,高研发投资及低调整成本企业借助产能治理来修正信贷依赖的能力更强,因此降低调整成本、扶植企业创新应成为优化融资结构的重要政策路径.文章在信号理论之外提出了产能驱动假说,解释了我国企业债务结构扭曲的动态特征,并从技术创新与调整成本视角为推动企业实现债务结构再平衡提供了政策参考.     

Determinants of firms’ investment behaviour: a multilevel approach

This article investigates the determinants of firms’ investment behaviour using firm data from 101 developing and emerging economies. A substantial number of firms does not invest in fixed capital or invests little relative to sales revenue. Using a multilevel probit model we study what factors trigger investment, and using a multilevel Heckman selection model we study what factors influence a firm’s investment-to-sales ratio. We find that firms’ investment behaviour has relatively little dependency on a country’s macroeconomic setting. Additionally, we find that, on average, firms that are completely foreign-owned have a relatively lower investment-to-sales ratio. Finally, we find evidence which suggests that the probability of investing is higher for firms located in countries with more control of corruption and we find some evidence which suggests that partially foreign-owned firms located in countries with relatively less corruption have a relatively higher investment-to-sales ratio.     

中国上市公司融资偏好问题的重新审视

基于对中国上市公司股本融资偏好问题的重新审视,我们发现:(1)如果将短期债务考虑在内并剔除首次公开募股的影响,股本融资偏好就不复存在;(2)在企业债务比率的调整过程中,融资缺口所起的作用超过了传统的企业特征因素,这意味着顺序偏好理论能在一定程度上解释企业的融资行为;(3)股票市场状况和政府管制政策会对企业外部融资的构成产生一定的影响。以上经验证据表明,中国上市公司的融资行为并不像原先所想的那样独特,主流的资本结构理论对企业的债务政策具有相当的解释能力。     

公司最优股权结构分析

公司股权结构是各利益方相互博弈的结果。本文从企业融资渠道的角度出发,考虑在负债条件下的企业最优股权结构的确定。通过文献回顾股权与绩效之间的关系,分析出股权集中度对公司绩效影响的研究大体分为三大类:股权集中度与公司绩效正相关、不相关以及股权的分散性与公司绩效呈正相关关系;同时认为股权结构的内生性问题与绩效也有一定的显著性影响。本文采用Pagano和Roell(1988)提出的股权结构的形成模型,同时本文将在外部融资中加入债务融资进行分析。理论分析表明,企业的最优股权结构受企业债务融资决策的影响。在考虑债务融资的情形下,股东的持股比例与企业的价值是相关的,也就是说,企业的股权结构可能是内生的,它会随着企业经营境况的改变而改变,是股东间博弈的结果。